ePrivacy
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iSpy with my little eye: Apple’s u-turn on privacy sets a precedent and threatens everyone’s security
Apple has just announced significant changes to their privacy settings for messaging and cloud services: first, it will scan all images sent by child accounts; second, it will scan all photos as they are being uploaded to iCloud. With these changes, Apple is threatening everyone’s privacy, security and confidentiality.
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Council of Europe’s Actions Belie its Pledges to Involve Civil Society in Development of Cross Border Police Powers Treaty
As the Council of Europe’s flawed cross border surveillance treaty moves through its final phases of approval, time is running out to ensure cross-border investigations occur with robust privacy and human rights safeguards in place. The treaty’s drafting process has been deeply flawed, with civil society groups, defense attorneys, and even data protection regulators largely sidelined.
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It’s official. Your private communications can (and will) be spied on
On 6 July, the European Parliament adopted in a final vote the derogation to the main piece of EU legislation protecting privacy, the ePrivacy Directive, to allow Big Tech to scan your emails, messages and other online communications.
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Data retention, location data, cookie banners: the ePrivacy Regulation is coming
Besides cookies, the purpose of the ePrivacy Directive is to regulate a much wider area: it contains specific data protection provisions for electronic communications data, in particular content data, traffic metadata, and location data that accrues when using the internet or talking on the phone. Importantly, it also regulates if and to what extent public authorities can access this data: Article 15 of the Directive provides that restrictions of the data protection provisions need to constitute "a necessary, appropriate and proportionate measure within a democratic society to safeguard national security".
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Booklet: Surveillance-based advertising: An industry broken by design and by default
Most online advertising today relies on huge amounts of personal data extracted from people without their knowledge. EDRi’s new guide book “Targeted Online” sheds light on this opaque data industry and explores how EU law should regulate it. This is the first blog post in a new series dedicated to the EU’s proposed Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.
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ePrivacy strikes back
“And when we woke up, the ePrivacy Regulation was still there”, could be the EU bubble version of the famous micro-tale. Four years after the main text protecting privacy and confidentiality of people in the EU was proposed, Member States have finally given the green light to finalise the adoption. But, where will this lead us?
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A vicious circle? Enabling privacy-friendly alternatives to behavioural advertising
EDRi member Panoptykon Foundation published a report “To Track or Not to Track: Towards Privacy-Friendly and Sustainable Advertising” which argues that there is only one winner in this supposed “win-win” situation: the ad tech industry.
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A human-centric internet for Europe
The European Union has set digital transformation as one of its key pillars for the next five years. New data-driven technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), offer societal benefits – but addressing their potential risks to our democratic values, the rule of law, and fundamental rights must be a top priority. “By driving a human rights-centric […]
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NCC Report: Online advertising industry is out of control
Today, on 14 January 2020, the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC), a consumers group active on the field of digital rights, denounces in their report “Out of Control” current practices of the adtech industry, including systematic privacy breaches and unlawful behavioural profiling. The report focuses on the analysis of data traffic from ten popular apps such […]
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ePrivacy: EU Member States push crucial reform on privacy norms close to a dead end
Today, on 22 November 2019, the Permanent Representatives Committee of the Council of the European Union (COREPER) has rejected the Council’s position on a draft ePrivacy Regulation. “In this era of disinformation and privacy scandals, refusing to ensure strong privacy protections in the ePrivacy Regulation is a step backwards for the EU,” said Diego Naranjo, […]
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Dance. Enjoy. Share. With Care.
Anyone using cloud services should be aware of what the “cloud” is, what it is not, and how it can affect our privacy and security. Our information stored in “clouds” can be protected if the EU says “Yes!” to a strong ePrivacy Regulation, greater enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and drops the […]
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ePrivacy hangs in the balance, but it’s not over yet…
Unless you have been living under a rock (read: outside the “Brussels bubble”) you will likely be aware of the long and winding road on which the proposed ePrivacy Regulation has been for the last three years. This is not unusual for a piece of European Union (EU) legislation – the 2018 General Data Protection […]
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