December 17, 2014 · Blogs

Edward Snowden honoured during Dutch Big Brother Awards ceremony

On 16 December 2014, EDRi-member Bits of Freedom organised the tenth Dutch Big Brother Awards. The Minister of Security and Justice, Ivo Opstelten, won the (un)popular vote for, among other things, his plans to keep data retention. It is the third time he has won the prize. Professional experts awarded Dutch schools an award for […]

Read more

 

May 27, 2020 · On the ground | Privacy and data protection | Surveillance and data retention

France: First victory against police drones

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, French police has been using drones to watch people and make sure they respect the lockdown. Drones had been used before by the police for the surveillance of protests, but the COVID-19 crisis represented a change of scale.

Read more

 

December 17, 2008

ECHR rules on identifying serious privacy infringers

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) On 2 December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave its judgement on the case K.U. v. Finland, considering that Article 8 of the Convention asks for national laws that will protect people from serious privacy infringements on the Internet, but at the same time […]

Read more

January 14, 2015 · Blogs

Romanian cybersecurity law sent to the Constitutional Court

A new law on cybersecurity, previously reported in the EDRi-gram, was adopted by the Romanian Parliament at the end of 2014. The law gives the Romanian Intelligence Agency (SRI) access to any computer data owned by private companies, without a court order. The proposal was tacitly adopted by the Chamber of Deputies on 17 September. […]

Read more

 

May 18, 2011

UK police has bought surveillance software to track online movements

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Britische Polizei schafft Software zur Überwachung des Onlineverkehrs an | http://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_9.10_GB_Software_zur_Ueberwachung_des_Onlineverkehrs] Civil liberties groups have shown great concern about the UK Metropolitan police force’s possible use of Geotime surveillance software that can map nearly every move in the digital world of “suspect” individuals. The Geotime security programme, that […]

Read more

January 18, 2006

France adopts anti-terrorism law

In November 23, the anti-terrorist draft law proposed by the Ministry on Internal Affairs of France, Nicolas Sarzoky was voted by a large majority of the deputies of the National Assembly. The law facilitates the surveillance of communications allowing the police to obtain communication data from telephone operators, Internet Services Providers, Internet cafes. ( see […]

Read more

January 18, 2006

Comparison between US and European anti-terror policies

In a report titled ” Threatening the Open Society: Comparing Anti-terror Policies and Strategies in the U.S. and Europe” and released on 13 December 2005, Privacy International compared the anti-terrorism approaches in the U.S. with those in Europe. The report finds that on every policy involving mass surveillance of its citizens, the EU is prepared […]

Read more

January 17, 2007

EU knew about the US's system profiling all visitors

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) New controversial issues appear in the case of Passanger Name Record (PNR) deal with US that show the level of privacy from the US authorities is very far from the European standards. As Statewatch revealed, the EU Council Presidency admitted that the Council of the European Union […]

Read more

January 16, 2008

PI: Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World 2007

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) UK-based human rights group Privacy International (PI) published at the end of last year the 2007 ranking assessment of the state of privacy in 47 countries, including all European Union member states. The raking is based on the Privacy & Human Rights reports produced since 1997 by […]

Read more

May 21, 2003

New cybercrime legislation in Romania

Romania has implemented the Cybercrime Convention in Title III of the Anticorruption law no 161/2003, published in the Official Monitor no 279 from 21 April 2003. Romania signed the convention in the end of 2001. There are no provisions regarding data retention, even though in some previous versions of the law there was an obligation […]

Read more

May 5, 2021 · Blogs | EDRi-gram | Information democracy | Privacy and confidentiality | Surveillance and data retention

France’s highest court validates mass surveillance in the long term

On 21 April, the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative court, released its decision on mass telecom surveillance. EDRi's member La Quadrature du Net (LQDN) shares its first impressions on this disconcerting ruling which puts the European Union’s legal order at risk.

Read more

 

March 10, 2021 · Blogs | EDRi-gram | Privacy and data protection | Biometrics | Cross border access to data | Data protection standards | Surveillance and data retention

Eurodac database repurposed to surveil migrants

Eurodac is the EU database used to store asylum seekers’ and refugees’ data, as well as certain categories of “irregular” migrants. By the end of 2019, the EU stored almost 6 million peoples’ fingerprint sets in the database. Research show how legislative developments transform the Eurodac database into “a powerful tool for mass surveillance”, endangering migrants' fundamental human rights.

Read more