April 29, 2020 · On the ground | Information democracy | Online tracking industry / AdTech | Profiling practices | Transparency

#WhoReallyTargetsYou: DSA and political microtargeting

Europe is about to overhaul its 20-year-old e-Commerce Directive and it is a once-in-a-decade chance to correct the power imbalance between platforms and users. As part of this update, the Digital Services Act (DSA) must address the issue of political microtargeting (PMT).

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April 25, 2022 · Blogs | Highlights | Press releases | Information democracy | Open internet and inclusive technology | Privacy and data protection | Platform regulation | Privacy and confidentiality

EU negotiators approve good DSA, but more work is needed to build a better internet

Friday night’s political agreement on the Digital Services Act (DSA) is a good first step towards protecting people’s rights on the internet and to some extent limiting the immense power that Big Tech companies have over people and democracies.

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January 19, 2022 · Blogs | Campaigns | Privacy and data protection | Online tracking industry / AdTech | Platform regulation | Surveillance and data retention

People ask MEPs: Take the opportunity, end surveillance ads!

Thousands of people are asking the EU Parliament to end online surveillance advertising , ahead of the DSA (Digital Services Act) vote in the plenary on Thursday, 20 January 2022. EDRi is part of the movement mobilising people, together with individual organisations in the PeopleVsBigTech group and beyond.

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February 10, 2021 · Blogs | EDRi-gram | Open internet and inclusive technology | Data protection standards | Equal access to the internet | Freedom of expression online | Surveillance and data retention

Polish law on “protecting the freedoms of social media users” will do exactly the opposite

EDRi member Panoptykon Foundation carefully analyses the Polish law on “the protection of freedoms of social media users” which turns out to introduce data retention, a new, questionable definition of “unlawful content”, and an oversight body that is likely to be politically compromised.

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July 6, 2022 · Blogs | Privacy and data protection | Data protection standards | Privacy and confidentiality

The UK Data Reform Bill and the British Bill of Rights: a tragedy in two acts

The dust hasn’t settled since plans to undermine everyone’s right to data protection were announced, but the UK Government are at it again. Plans to ditch the Human Rights Act in the UK were just unveiled, in a combined effort to steamroll the rule of law and the freedoms we have always taken for granted. EDRi member Open Rights Group explains how the impact of this constitutional butchery reverberates in data protection, and why both the Data Reform Bill and the Bill of Rights follow a common thread.

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June 4, 2003

Irish DPA threatens government with court case

According to an article in the Irish Times of 26 May, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner Mr Joe Meade has twice threatened to begin High Court proceedings against the Government for using an “invalid” Ministerial Direction to unconstitutionally store citizens’ phone, fax and mobile call data for 3 years. As reported in EDRI-gram nr. 3, […]

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March 23, 2016 · Blogs

The lobby-tomy 3: who are lobbying?

Did you know that there are 340,000 dentists in Europe? And that they lobby about privacy? Who else lobbies? How do parties/groups create coalitions to persuade policy makers? What’s the mayor of Amsterdam doing in Brussels? In this blog on the privacy lobby we describe the different parties that are lobbying. The new European data […]

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February 1, 2023 · Blogs | Privacy and data protection | Artificial intelligence (AI) | Biometrics

Phone unlocking vs biometric mass surveillance: what’s the difference?

Facial recognition is one of the most hotly-debated topics in the European Union’s (EU) Artificial Intelligence Act. Lawmakers are more aware than ever of the risks posed by automated surveillance systems which pervasively track our faces – as well as our bodies and movements - across time and place. This can amount to biometric mass surveillance (BMS), which undermines our anonymity and freedom, and weaponises our faces and bodies against us. The article explores the types of biometric technology and their implications.

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March 11, 2015 · Blogs

France implements Internet censorship without judicial oversight

The recent terrorist attacks in Europe have led to many statements implying the necessity of limiting citizens’ fundamental rights to ensure public safety. At the European level we are faced with the alarming prospect of air passenger data (Passenger Name Records, PNR) collection and long-term storage, while in France the legislative mills are turning even faster. […]

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January 30, 2008

Main data protection concerns with the EU policy developments in 2007

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) The Lisbon Treaty was signed in December 2007. Notwithstanding the many critics raised by this Treaty, the text, when ratified by all member States, will bring two major improvements to the EU and its citizens. First, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union will become […]

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April 5, 2017 · Blogs

Reckless social media law threatens freedom of expression in Germany

At the end of March 2017, with Federal elections on the horizon, the German Justice Minister Heiko Maas proposed a law on ill-defined “social networks”. Minister Maas has proposed the law which places a variety of obligations on the companies, in the apparent hope that this will lead profit-motivated companies to take over private censorship […]

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April 8, 2016 · Blogs

Special report: Poland’s secret services are still using and abusing telecom and Internet data

With almost two million requests for telecommunication data and more than two thousand requests for Internet data concerning Polish citizens in 2015, it is clear that the access to metadata in Poland by the country’s secret services is still out of control. Compared to 2014, the Polish Panoptykon Foundation found that the number of requests […]

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