September 25, 2013 · Blogs

Surveillance scandal in discussion at the United Nations

The surveillance scandal has now reached the United Nation’s Human Rights Council, which opened its 24th session last week to a volley of questions about privacy and spying, many of them targeted at the United States and United Kingdom. (That’s perhaps not surprising, since U.N. representatives were among those listed as being monitored by the […]

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May 23, 2007

Google is profiling online gamers

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) Google has filed a patent in Europe and in US on a profiling technology planning to create psychological profiles of web users based on their behaviour at playing on-line games. The company thinks it can gather up information to shape the personality of web users according to […]

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October 10, 2012

ECJ to rule on the biometric passports

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [EuGH befasst sich mit biometrischen Reisepässen | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_10.19_EuGH_befasst_sich_mit_biometrischen_Reisepaessen?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20121010] The Dutch administrative court asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) whether the EU Regulation obliging member states to store fingerprints in passports and travel documents infringes the right to privacy. This is a result of four cases in which […]

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September 25, 2013 · Blogs

ENDitorial: The DNT ship is listing

The latest developments in the W3C working group on Do Not Track (euphemistically called the tracking preference working group) since the last time we wrote about this effort are not good, sadly. First in late July the departure of Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student at Stanford who fought tirelessly to ensure that the W3C process […]

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May 21, 2008

Updates on Visa Information System Regulation

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) An updated version of the Regulation on the Visa Information System (VIS) published by Statewatch reveals that only random checks might be carried out, if there are too many people waiting. As already presented in EDRi-gram, the legislative package on the Visa Information System that included the […]

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October 10, 2012

Turkish plans to use IDs for accessing the Internet

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Türkei plant eindeutige Identifizierung beim Zugang zum Internet | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_10.19_Tuerkei_plant_eindeutige_Identifizierung_beim_Zugang_zum_Internet?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20121010] The party in power has been dreaming of following and blacklisting Internet users for a long time by making it obligatory to enter ID number and a password to access the Internet. Such applications are already in force […]

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June 30, 2021 · Blogs | Privacy and data protection | Cross border access to data | Data protection standards

Fear and loathing in the UK adequacy decision

The Council of the European Union unanimously approved the United Kingdom (UK) draft adequacy decision. In an ideal world, this would indicate that the UK offers an adequate level of protection for personal data, and would signal their willingness to retain those standards. Unfortunately, reality tells a different story, that should be worrying for human rights advocates on both sides of the channel.

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November 19, 2003

EU court of justices rules against personal data on website

Pointing to different persons on a website and making them recognisable by naming them or in any other manner is an act of processing of personal data and must therefore be dealt with under EU Directive 95/46/EC. That’s the substance of a recent judgement of the European Court of Justice (reference number C-101/01; case Bodil […]

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May 21, 2008

Google StreetView might breach EU laws

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) The European Data Protection Supervisor warned that the StreetView feature of the Google Maps service could breach the EU data protection laws, if they show the pictures taken from the European cities. The StreetView service makes it possible for users of GoogleMaps to see several photos that […]

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May 21, 2014 · Blogs

ENDitorial: Google Spain vs AEPD – the cup is half full

Judgements from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) are typically meant to settle debates about European law, not to stir them up. Last week’s judgement on Google versus Spain falls short of this goal. It is definitely groundbreaking and parts of its analysis have a beautiful logic. That Google is a data […]

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October 10, 2012

“CLEAN IT”: the secret EU surveillance plan that wasn’t

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [“CLEAN IT”: Der geheime Überwachungsplan, der keiner war | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_10.19_CLEAN_IT_Der_geheime_Ueberwachungsplan_der_keiner_war?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20121010] There was a lot of interest among EU policy wonks and digital rights people last week about an initiative called CLEAN IT, following the leak of its “confidential” draft recommendations. “Police to ‘patrol’ Facebook and Twitter for terrorists […]

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January 15, 2004

PNR: Bolkestein misleads European Parliament

Commissioner Frits Bolkestein concealed important details on the draft agreement reached with the USA on the transfer of Passenger Name Record Data (PNR) to the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection when reporting to two Committees of the European Parliament four weeks ago. This is what Bolkestein’s spokesman Jonathan Todd has admitted in an […]

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