April 8, 2015 · Blogs

Data protection and privacy must be excluded from TTIP

Data protection is a contentious issue in the discussions about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and other trade or investment agreements, such as the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). Now that the European Parliament is preparing to issue a non-legislative resolution on TTIP, various parliamentary committees are giving their input to the committee […]

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June 3, 2015 · Blogs

ENDitorial: From copywrong to copyright?

“I’ve got two 12-year-old criminals in my kitchen and that can’t be right” (Jonathan Worth, professional photographer) The first round of debates surrounding the copyright reform in the European Parliament are reaching their last stages. Pavel Svoboda’s report on Intellectual Property Right (IPR) enforcement was published on 19 May. The report contains a mixture of […]

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June 17, 2015 · Blogs

Our overview of the Digital Single Market Communication

This article was originally published on the website of Friends of Europe EDRi has published its analysis of the European Commission’s Digital Single Market Communication (PDF). The European Commission’s launch of its Digital Single Market Strategy is undoubtedly a positive step, but is plagued with ambiguities, contradictions and an overall lack of leadership on key […]

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July 15, 2015 · Blogs

ICANN considers banning privacy services

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is proposing a new Internet policy which comes at the expense of human rights, especially privacy and freedom of speech. The proposed rules are addressed to companies that provide WHOIS privacy/proxy services (which restrict access to domain registrant information) and limit their availability to individuals only, […]

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September 9, 2015 · Blogs

EDRi identifies key challenges to freedom of expression online

On 13 November 2014, EDRi met with the European External Action Service (EEAS) for a civil society consultation on the EU Human Rights Guidelines on Freedom of Expression Online and Offline. The EEAS aims at improving the Guidelines in the future and was seeking input to that end. EDRi had already outlined its position in […]

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September 9, 2015 · Blogs

Three French NGOs challenge French international surveillance

On 3 September 2015, the non-profit Internet Service Providers (ISPs) French Data Network (FDN) and the FDN Federation (FFDN) as well as a digital rights advocacy group La Quadrature du Net announced the introduction of two legal challenges before the French Council of State against the Internet surveillance activities of French foreign intelligence services, Directorate-General […]

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September 9, 2015 · Blogs

Romania: After PNR, a proposal for retention of tourist data

On 15 July 2015, the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) of the European Parliament narrowly voted in favour of the EU Passenger Name Record (PNR) Directive proposal (32 in favour, 26 against, no abstentions), a mass surveillance measure to collect and process air traveller data for profiling purposes. This came after […]

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September 23, 2015 · Blogs

Generali, the health insurer who wants to know everything about you

On 20 May 2015, we published a collection of science fiction stories for the 300th edition of EDRi-gram newsletter – the premise of the collection was scenarios that we envisaged happening in 2025. We did not imagine that one of the stories on data collection practices by health insurers would be getting closer to reality […]

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September 23, 2015 · Blogs

Germany dreams of security: An ID for every “thing” connected

New infrastructures often resemble untapped oil sources – everyone tries to get in as early as possible in order to grab the biggest share. The German newspaper Die Zeit Online revealed in September that a chip manufacturer has apparently been going to great lengths to ensure a large share of the growing market of the […]

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November 18, 2015 · Blogs

UK Draft Investigatory Powers Bill: Missed opportunity

The UK Government has published a draft of the long-awaited Investigatory Powers Bill. Since the Snowden revelations, civil liberty groups have been calling for a new law that would restrain the UK intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The UK government, however, has been calling for increased surveillance powers since the failure of the draft Communications […]

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December 2, 2015 · Blogs

EDPS Opinion: Effective data protection needed for “big data”

On 19 November 2015, the European Data Protection Supervisor published an Opinion on the challenges of “big data”. The Opinion is entitled “A call for transparency, user control, data protection by design and accountability”. The title alone shows how extensive and complicated the issue of big data really is, and squeezing all of these issues […]

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December 2, 2015 · Blogs

European Internet Forum – untransparent and dangerous

The European Internet Forum will finally be launched on 3 December by the European Commission. The purpose of the initiative is to fight terrorism by large online companies doing things that seem like they might be useful to fight terrorism. “It is fanciful to the point of being childish to believe that online giants are […]

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