Privacy and data protection
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EU Commissioners candidates spoke: State of play for digital rights
On 1 November 2019, the new College of European Commissioners – comprising 27 representatives (one from each EU Member State), rather than the usual 28, thanks to Brexit – are scheduled to take their seats for the next five years, led by incoming President-elect, Ursula von der Leyen.
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#PrivacyCamp20: Technology and Activism
The 8th annual Privacy Camp will take place in Brussels on 21 January 2020. With the focus on “Technology and Activism”, Privacy Camp 2020 will explore the significant role digital technology plays in activism, enabling people to bypass traditional power structures and fostering new forms of civil disobedience, but also enhancing the surveillance power of […]
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Austrian Passenger Name Records complaint – the key points
Austrian EDRi member epicenter.works filed a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority (DPA) about the Passenger Name Records (PNR) in August 2019, with the aim to overturn the EU PNR Directive. On 6 September, the DPA rejected the complaint, which was a good news, because that was the only way to lodge a complaint […]
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The sixth attempt to introduce mandatory SIM registration in Romania
A tragic failure by the police to save a teenage girl who was abducted but managed to call the 112 emergency number three times before she was murdered, led to the adoption of a new Emergency Ordinance in Romania. The law introduces several measures to improve the 112 system, one of which is mandatory SIM card registration for all prepaid users. Currently approximately ten million prepaid SIM cards are used in Romania.
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Trilogues on terrorist content: Upload or re-upload filters? Eachy peachy.
On 17 October 2019, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union (EU) and the European Commission started closed-door negotiations, trilogues, with a view to reaching an early agreement on the Regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online. The European Parliament improved the text proposed by the European Commission by addressing its […]
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Open letter to EU Member States: Deliver ePrivacy now!
On 11 October 2019, EDRi, together with four other civil society organisations, sent an open letter to EU Member States, to urge to conclude the negotiations on the ePrivacy Regulation. The letter highlights the urgent need for a strong ePrivacy Regulation in order to tackle the problems created by the commercial surveillance business models, and […]
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Why weak encryption is everybody’s problem
Representatives of the UK Home Department, US Attorney General, US Homeland Security and Australian Home Affairs have joined forces to issue an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg. In their letter of 4 October, they urge Facebook to halt plans for end-to-end (aka strong) encryption across Facebook’s messaging platforms, unless such plans include “a means for […]
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Right a wrong: ePrivacy now!
When the European Commission proposed to replace the outdated and improperly enforced 2002 ePrivacy Directive with a new ePrivacy Regulation in January 2017, it marked a cautiously hopeful moment for digital rights advocates across Europe. With the backdrop of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), adopted in May 2018, Europe took a giant leap ahead […]
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CJEU on cookies: ‘Consent or be tracked’ is not an option
European Digital Rights (EDRi) welcomes the CJEU's confirmation that under the current data protection framework, cookies can only be set if users have given consent that is valid under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
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PNR complaint advances to the Austrian Federal Administrative Court
On 19 August 2019, Austrian EDRi member epicenter.works lodged a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority (DPA) against the Passenger Name Records (PNR) Directive. After only three weeks, on 6 September, they received the response from the DPA: The complaint was rejected. That sounds negative at first, but is actually good news. The complaint […]
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Why EU passenger surveillance fails its purpose
The EU Directive imposing the collection of flyers’ information (Passenger Name Record, PNR) was adopted in April 2016, the same day as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The collection of PNR data from all flights going in and out of Brussels has a strong impact on the right of privacy of individuals and it […]
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Portugal: Data retention complaint reaches the Constitutional Court
September 2019 brought us long-awaited developments regarding the situation of data retention in Portugal. The Justice Ombudsman decided to send the Portuguese data retention law to the Constitutional Court, following the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU’s) case law on blanket retention of data that lead to invalidation of Directive 2006/24/EC. This decision […]
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