November 5, 2003

New anti-spam legislation in NL and Austria

On the 31st of October, the European Directive on Privacy in electronic communications (2002/58/EC) went into force. Only a minority of countries has implemented the directive in time, but any European citizen can now directly appeal to the directive in their national courts. Most recently, the Dutch Lower House accepted the spam-ban on 4 November, […]

Read more

June 17, 2015 · Blogs

EU continues push for travel surveillance by the back door

The European Commission has released its plans for providing financial support to national security measures. These plans, despite the absence of a legal basis, privacy concerns and a pending EU Court of Justice (CJEU) decision, include the financing of a European mass surveillance measure: namely the long-term storage and exchange of citizens’ air travel data, […]

Read more

 

May 24, 2006

Set up of the Internet Governance Forum Advisory Group

The Internet Governance Forum Advisory Group (IGF AG) to the UN Secretary-General, selected by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on 17 May, met in Geneva on 22-23 May to discuss the agenda and the programme of the Athens Meeting (31 October – 3 November 2006). Members of the group and observers had a two-day meeting […]

Read more

June 29, 2016 · Blogs

A new Regulation for closing down the internet in Turkey

A new telecom Regulation increases concerns about freedom of expression in Turkey. It redefines the power of the Turkish information and communication technologies authority (BTK). The Regulation was published on the Official Gazette issue 29739 on 11 June 2016. Item 10 of the Regulation is titled “Blocking the service and the suspension of the service […]

Read more

 

November 5, 2003

State take-over of top-level domain in Ukraine

The government of Ukraine is trying to take-over the national .ua top-level domain. Via a new act on the administration of the .ua domain, adopted on 22 July 2003, the new enterprise Ukrainian Network Information Centre was established and made responsible. The act was apparently adopted after complaints in the media by government officials about […]

Read more

September 25, 2013 · Blogs

Snowden nominated for the 2013 Sakharov Prize

Eric Snowden, the whistleblower behind the revelations regarding the electronic surveillance made by NSA, GCHQ and other intelligent services, has been nominated for the 2013 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the Greens/EFA group and GUE/NGL group. The seven nominees for the 2013 Sakharov Prize were presented at a joint meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Development committees […]

Read more

August 23, 2017 · Blogs

EU decision-making is not EU administration, says EU administration

In 2016, the EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly made some recommendations to improve the transparency of the “trilogue” process. Trilogues are informal negotiations conducted between a small number of representatives of the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the Commission, and they are increasingly used to circumvent the traditional, treaty-based decision-making process of […]

Read more

 

January 15, 2020 · Blogs | Privacy and data protection | Biometrics

Amazon’s Rekognition shows its true colors

EDRi member Bits of Freedom has been investigating the problems associated with the use of facial recognition by the police in the public space. As part of this investigation they wanted to put this technology to the test themselves. How does facial recognition technology really work? Digital tourism On Dam Square, in the center of […]

Read more

 

November 5, 2003

New telecommunication law in Germany

On 15 October the German Federal Government adopted a draft new telecommunication act. The draft aims, inter alia, at implementing the European Directive on privacy and electronic communications (2002/58/EC), but will not introduce the spam-ban described in Article 13 of the Directive. In Germany spam will be banned through an update of the Act against […]

Read more

May 7, 2014 · Blogs

Norwegian Intelligence Service acquires supercomputer

According tothe leaked NSA internal information paper “NSA Intelligence Relationship with Norway”, the Norwegian Intelligence Service NIS is acquiring a supercomputer codenamed Steelwinter as part of a 100 million dollar investment program, to be able to crack strong cryptology and analyse vast amounts of data. “NIS is in the process of acquiring Steel Winter (a […]

Read more

November 17, 2010

Macedonia: New copyright law

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Neues Urheberrechtsgesetz in Mazedonien | http://www.unwatched.org/node/2363] Prison sentences of up to five years for copyright infringement are projected in the new Law on Copyright and Related Rights adopted in September 2010 in Macedonia. With this law, which in addition to authors’ and artists’ rights also regulates the rights […]

Read more

June 29, 2016 · Blogs

How digital rights in the UK will be affected by Brexit

The United Kingdom’s vote to leave the EU means that inhabitants of the country no longer have a clear idea what levels and kinds of protection of digital rights they will have in the future. Nearly all the relevant law is European. A lot depends on the kind of model of leaving the EU that […]

Read more