May 10, 2006

Chechen web site shut down in Sweden

After many complaints from Russia, the Swedish authorities closed up on 5 May, Kavkazcenter.com, a Chechen separatist Web site that allegedly encouraged terrorism. The police arrived at PRQ Web hosting company in Stockholm with a search warrant and confiscated two servers. The Finish owner of the servers, Mikael Storsjo, told Swedish news agency TT that […]

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May 23, 2007

US official makes PNR demands to the European Parliament

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) As the negotiations of the PNR (Passenger Name Records) issue continue between the US Government and the European Parliament, during his visit to Brussels on 14 May, US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asked for more relaxed restrictions on the personal data transfer from the airline companies. […]

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July 12, 2016 · Blogs

Algorithms – censorship à la carte?

On 17 June, the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) presented software designed to stop the proliferation of “extremist“ video and audio online. CEP is a non-profit organisation that states as its mission “combating extremist groups”. Of course, this algorithm alone can do nothing: To be operational, it needs a database of already identified “extremist” content. Humans […]

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July 15, 2015 · Blogs

Remembering Özgür Uçkan

Özgür Uçkan, one of the pioneers of the digital rights and free Internet movement in Turkey, passed away on 10 July. He was 54 years old, and had been battling with cancer for two years. He was one of the founders of the Turkish EDRi member Alternative Informatics Association (AIA) and his contribution to the […]

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January 14, 2009

Montenegro blocks Facebook and Youtube for civil servants

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) Montenegro’s office in charge with the government Internet infrastructure decided to ban access to several social networking or video sharing websites, such as YouTube or Facebook. The public servants were announced by a statement sent at the end of December 2008 by the office to all civil […]

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July 18, 2007

Media and telecom companies oppose CISAC proposal

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) On 10 July 2007, the EU Commission received a letter from a large group including some of Europe’s biggest media groups and telecom companies urging for the rejection of an offer made by EU national royalty-collecting societies to settle an anti-trust case. The Commission started examining a […]

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December 5, 2012 · Blogs

Danish opposition wants to abandon the illegal medicine site blocking

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Dänemark: Opposition will Netzsperren gegen illegalen Medikamentenhandel aufgeben | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_10.23_Daenemark_Opposition_will_Netzsperren_gegen_illegalen_Medikamentenhandel_aufgeben?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20121205] A majority outside the Danish government parties proposes to abandon blocking access to websites selling illegal medicine. The law (a new revision of the laws regulating selling of medicine etc.) allowing blocking of these sites was passed in […]

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September 20, 2016 · Blogs

ENDitorial: “Hate speech”: Who’s the German for hypocrisy

German interior minister Thomas De Maizière has a simple solution for “hate speech”. He believes that other people should stop it. He believes that someone (else) should do something. In particular, he is very keen that American internet companies should become much more involved in policing, suppressing and punishing what they consider to be “hate […]

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February 24, 2010

First decision in the Italian criminal case against Google executives

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Erstes Urteil im italienischen Strafverfahren gegen Google-Führungskräfte | http://www.unwatched.org/node/1721] Today, 24 February 2010, the Court of Milan made public the decision in the criminal trial against four Google executives, charged of defamation and illegal personal data handling in relationship to the publication on the video sharing platform of […]

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September 13, 2006

TOR servers seized in Germany

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) The public prosecutor’s office of Konstanz, Germany raided, during the last weekend some computing centres and seized several servers that were running copies of TOR, a well known software used for the anonymisation of the Internet usage. The action was related to a child pornography case, and, […]

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September 10, 2008

Spanish local police keeps illegal database for political reasons

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) It has been revealed that the Spanish local police of Sada (Galicia) was keeping an illegal database with information and pictures of people, gathered during night patrols. On 14 August 2008, a counsellor, a local police officer and a Guardia Civil sergeant discovered in an office of […]

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September 12, 2007

EU asks the customers' opinion on the DoubleClick -Google affair

As Google plans to buy out U.S. web advertising supplier DoubleClick, the European Commission has already sent questionnaires to Google customers on the matter, even before Google has actually filed to the European Union’s top antitrust regulator for the purchase. This is considered a rather unusual step as although the European Commission has frequently sent […]

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