Germany
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Advocate General: Dynamic IP address can be personal data
On 12 May Manuel Campos Sánchez-Bordona, Advocate General (AG) of the European Court of Justice (CJEU), gave his opinion in the Case Patrick Breyer against the Federal Republic of Germany, C-582/14. Patrick Breyer sued the German government for violating his right to data protection by storing the data about him visiting websites of the German […]
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Germany dreams of security: An ID for every “thing” connected
New infrastructures often resemble untapped oil sources – everyone tries to get in as early as possible in order to grab the biggest share. The German newspaper Die Zeit Online revealed in September that a chip manufacturer has apparently been going to great lengths to ensure a large share of the growing market of the […]
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Germany: The secret service’s 300-million-euro surveillance plan
This is a shortened English version of the German article originally published by Andre Meister on Netzpolitik.org. Translation and changes by Kirsten Fiedler and Nikolai Schnarrenberger. Fibreoptic surveillance, scanning of Internet traffic in real time, cracking encryption, hacking computers: Germany’s foreign intelligence agency “Bundesnachrichtendienst” (BND) is massively expanding its internet surveillance capabilities. On 21 September, […]
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Data retention: German government tries again
Even before the parliamentary summer recess starting on 4 July, the German government wants to push a national law on data retention through the German Bundestag. After the Ministry of Justice presented so-called guidelines in mid-April, and a complete draft law only a month later, the Parliament is now supposed to debate and pass this […]
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Big Brother Awards Germany 2015
On 17 April 2015, EDRi member Digitalcourage held its annual Big Brother Awards gala in Bielefeld, Germany. Just two days earlier, politicians in Berlin had provided a very poignant context when the German Justice Minister Heiko Maas’ “grand coalition” had published “guidelines” for a draft bill to reintroduce telecommunications data retention in Germany. At the […]
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Bad analogies and the threat to “cybersecurity”
In policy discussions about the online world a general pattern repeats: The online sphere is differentiated from its offline equivalent by adding the prefix “cyber”, giving it both immediacy and generating a fear of the unknown “cyberworld”. Then, in order to explain “cyberspace”, practitioners draw analogies between cyber and non-cyber, often being blissfully unaware of, […]
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In Germany, Data Retention refuses to die
The debate is intensifying in Germany on whether telecommunications data retention should be reintroduced. At the centre of the controversy is Sigmar Gabriel, the leader of the Social Democrats (SPD, the smaller party in Germany’s “grand coalition” government since 2013), and consequently a government minister for the economy and chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy. Gabriel’s role […]
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Germany gets warning about warning letters
Ever since the adoption of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive (IPRED) in 2004, and its ensuing transposition into national laws, warning letters based on alleged copyright infringements have become big business for the German content-industry, anti-piracy firms and their affiliated lawyers. From the perspective of hundreds of thousands of internet users, however, they are a nuisance […]
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CJEU: Embedding not a copyright infringement
On 21 October 2014 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that embedding copyrighted videos is not a violation of copyright, even when the source video is uploaded without the permission from the rightsholder. The case, dealing with a dispute between a water filtering company BestWater International and two independent commercial agents […]
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The “Google tax” that is not a Google tax
The new European Commissioner with responsibility for “digital agenda” issues, Guenther Oettinger caused a stir in the media recently when he raised the possibility of introducing “ancillary copyright” payments, requiring search engine providers to pay for displaying copyrighted materials on their sites, on the EU level. The press was all of a sudden full of […]
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Risk-based approach to data protection: risky for fundamental rights
On 18 September an EU Council document related to the draft EU data protection regulation was published. The document summarises the positions of Member States that have given their views on a so-called “risk-based approach to data protection”, within the context of the (so far) 30-month negotiations on a review of European data protection legislation. […]
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Germany exports surveillance technologies to human rights violators
From Mexico to Mozambique to Pakistan and beyond, there is now ample evidence that governments across the globe are using mass surveillance technologies to spy on their citizens. Who makes these technologies? And who benefits from their sales? Germany is a major exporter of these technologies and , at the same time as digital communications […]
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