EDRi-gram 12.12
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Freedom of information: EU Commission creates barriers for access to documents requests
It is crucial to know what the European institutions are up to in order to ensure that citizens’ fundamental rights are respected. Democracy requires vigilance and vigilance requires access to information. It is precisely for this reason that freedom of information legislation exists. Since the entry in force of Regulation 1049/2001 setting up the EU […]
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Belgian Big Brother Awards 2014: This year’s winners are…
On 4 June, EDRi member Liga voor Mensenrechten granted the Belgian Big Brother Awards. The public voted for the former public prosecutor Yves Liégeois for his views on DNA databases for newborn babies. The second prize, the professional jury’s prize, went to the “smartphone”, our ever-present pocket-size spy, and the third prize, the Lifetime Achievement […]
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Turkish government to acquire a tool to censor social media?
Turkish media reports that the government intends to buy NetClean software to remove unwanted material from Twitter. The negotiations are said to be ongoing with an exorbitant price tag of 40 million euros. NetClean is a Swedish software company that specializes in providing “intelligence solutions to block, detect and analyse digital media”. The Turkish government […]
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Report on Snowden – Government apathy but increased public concern
In the wake of the first anniversary of Edward Snowden’s first revelations, a global analysis was published, assessing the international impact of those disclosures. The report, “A crisis of Accountability” revealed not only that had most governments entirely ignored the Snowden revelations, but that some governments including the US and the UK have been actively […]
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Germany opens investigation on Merkel’s phone tap
Germany’s federal prosecutor annouced on 11 June 2014 that it has opened a formal investigation into the alleged monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone by the US’s National Security Agency (NSA). The German government has reportedly announced its support to the investigation. Although Chancellor Merkel has asked the US President Barack Obama in person […]
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Facebook adds third-party website data to ad targeting profiles
Facebook announced in a blog post on 12 June 2014 that it will start expanding its users’ advertising data by letting marketers target ads based not only on users’ activities on the social network, but also on third-party websites. By clicking on an arrow in the corner of the ads, a user can see the […]
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Neelie Kroes’ campaign to kill net neutrality
Two months have passed since the European Parliament adopted amendments to enshrine net neutrality in EU law at the beginning of April 2014. The Telecoms Single Market proposal is now being reviewed by the Council (Member States) of the EU. Rather than sitting back and waiting for the Council to carry out its work, Vice […]
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ENDitorial: Turkish censorship – Swedish built, by royal appointment
The level of political support in Sweden for blocking, for blocking outside the rule of law and for the export of the filtering and blocking services of the Swedish internet filtering company NetClean is quite extraordinary. Domestically, Sweden has a chaotic “voluntary” web blocking scheme, whereby Internet providers block a range of websites on the […]
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Google’s right to be forgotten – industrial scale misinformation?
When the European Court ruled on the Google Spain case, the press leaped on the decision as an example of the “right to be forgotten”. The Guardian explained that Google would “have to delete links to two pages on La Vanguardia’s website” and that “[l]egal experts said the ruling could give the go-ahead to deletion […]
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