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Unprecedented appearance by European Commissioner for Home Affairs, innovating on quicksand, and the cabinet vs. online confidentiality
Read through the most interesting developments at the intersection of human rights and technology from the Netherlands. This is the second update in this series.
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Repression is really something different than prevention
In 2021, a 17-year-old boy in the Netherlands was arrested for inciting of riots. The boy had called for people to come to Utrecht with fireworks as a protest against the corona policy and the fireworks ban. The boy received a so-called "online area ban" from the municipality, even though the mayor does not have a legal basis for such an order. He was no longer allowed to make statements online that could lead to disorder in the city. Local rules do not provide majors the authority to curtail the freedom of expression as prevention, online or otherwise.
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The secret services’ reign of confusion, rogue mayors, racist tech and algorithm oversight (or not)
Have a quick read through January’s most interesting developments at the intersection of human rights and technology from the Netherlands.
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Good news: Dutch secret services destroy unlawfully stored information on millions of innocent citizens
The secret services store information on millions of citizens that they are no longer by law allowed to have. EDRi member Bits of Freefom filed a complaint about this with the supervisor. The supervisor stated on June 15, 2022, that the data must be destroyed.
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Hooray! Bits of Freedom freed the data of millions of people from the clutches of the secret services!
The Complaints Department of the Review Committee on the Intelligence and Security Services (CTIVD), the Dutch supervisor of the secret services, ruled that EDRi member Bits of Freedom is right!
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European Commission wants to eliminate online confidentiality
This might sound attention-seeking, but we really believe to be not far off the mark. It really looks like the European Commission wants to cancel encryption.
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Belgium wants to ban Signal – a harbinger of European policy to come
Last week, the Belgian government launched a proposal that would ban Signal. What's going on?
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Belgian authority finds IAB Europe’s consent pop-ups incompatible with the GDPR
Following a number of complaints filed in 2018 and 2019, including by EDRi-members Panoptykon and Bits of Freedom, and coordinated by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Belgian Data Protection Authority has found that the consent system developed and managed by the adtech industry body IAB Europe, and used by many websites in the EU, is illegal under the GDPR.
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Tinkering with keys weakens encryption
Politicians sometimes claim to have the solution to "the problem of encryption". They think encryption is important, but they also want the police to be able to read along. Therefore they propose to "just" add an extra key and "leave the encryption untouched". But is it?
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Big-tech lobby sets the rules about big-tech in Europe
The dominance of Google and Facebook is disastrous for the public debate online. We've been saying this for a long time. But this dominance can also be felt in the regulation of the same platforms. Huge amounts of money are spent by big tech to influence European laws and regulations.
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How one word took an entire organization off the air
EDRi's member Bits of Freedom cannot share this blog post with their supporters on Facebook. The reason for this: the word "QAnon" appears in it. This single word was all it took to have the Facebook page of The Hmm and that of its three administrators removed.
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Washed in blue: living lab Digital Perimeter in Amsterdam
An increasing amount of Dutch government agencies seem to resort to so-called ‘living labs’ and ‘field labs’ in order to test and experiment with technological innovations in a realistic setting. In recent years, these live laboratories have proven to be a useful stepping stone to introduce new technologies into public space. In the last several weeks, EDRi's member Bits of Freedom took a closer look at one of those living labs – the so-called Digital Perimeter surrounding the Johan Cruijff ArenA in Amsterdam – and were not pleased with what they saw.
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