EDRi-gram 15.11
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ENDitorial: AVMSD – the “legislation without friends” Directive?
When the European Commission proposed yet another revision of the TV Without Frontiers Directive in 2016, the Directive was really showing its age. The Directive was originally launched in 1989, revised just eight years later in 1997, again ten years later in 2007, and finally only three years after that in 2010. It has become […]
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EU Commission on FOI request: Incompetence or ill-intent?
In April 2017, we got a little curious about industry lobbying in Brussels surrounding the copyright reform. We therefore filed a freedom of information (FOI) request to access the correspondence that the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT) of the European Commission received by rightsholders shortly before the reform proposal was finalised […]
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UK government pushes for companies to weaken encryption
The terrorist attack in Manchester on 22 May has led to a relaunch of the encryption debate in the UK. In December 2016, the UK parliament passed the Investigatory Powers Act. This wide-ranging surveillance law gives government ministers the power to issue Technical Capability Notices (TCNs), which can force companies to modify their products.These powers could […]
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Irish police phone tapping undermines citizens’ rights
An Garda Síochána, the Irish police force has fallen, yet again, under public scrutiny for privacy violations of innocent citizens. An investigation by the Irish Independent newspaper has found that members of the public had their phones tapped without proper justification. The widespread phone tapping was revealed after a senior officer tried to highlight his […]
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Romanian Parliament: EU Copyright reform does more harm than good
While the European Parliament is in the middle of its discussions about the European Commission’s proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, similar discussions are taking place in a number of Member State parliaments. The results of these conversations will influence the position that Member States take in the discussions in […]
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The EU must take action to protect whistleblowers
The right of citizens to report wrongdoing is a natural extension of the right of freedom of expression, and is linked to the principles of transparency and integrity. – Transparency International Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden are some of the most famous whistleblowers, thanks to their huge impact on the protection of human rights. However, there […]
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ENDitorial: Consumer protection MEPs launch attack on consumers
Documents leaked by Julia Reda, a Member the European Parliament (MEP) show that parliamentarians on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), whose job it is to protect consumers and improve legal consistency in the EU, are planning an assault on citizens’ fundamental rights, legal coherence and even the ultimate authority of […]
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ALTwitter: The treasure trove behind 140 characters
One of the main reasons why metadata is used broadly for surveillance and targeted advertisement is its extensive capability to capture more dimensions of useful information than the data itself. An ordinary internet user fails to see the mysterious nature of metadata because it is invisible to the naked eye. Law enforcement agencies and advertisers, on […]
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