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Consumer and citizen groups continue to have serious concerns about Google Fitbit takeover
Regulators investigating Google’s takeover of Fitbit are reportedly seeking commitments from Google to allow them to clear this deal. It is widely recognised that this takeover raises serious competition and privacy concerns and risks harming citizens and consumers in several markets including wearables, advertising and digital health.
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‘Not On Our Watch’: A public campaign against Google’s jump into our health data
Monopolies, mergers and acquisitions, anti-trust laws. These may seem like tangential or irrelevant issues for privacy and digital rights organisations. But having run our first public petition opposing a big tech merger, we wanted to set out why we think this is an important frontier for people's rights across Europe and indeed across the world.
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First Analysis of the Austrian Anti-Hate Speech Law (NetDG/KoPlG)
On September 3rd the Austrian government released a legislative package to tackle online hate speech. Besides a comprehensive justice reform, the package also contains a bill that creates new obligations for online platforms to remove illegal user-generated content. This article offers a first analysis of the so called Kommunikationsplattformen-Gesetz (KoPl-G) and the many similarities it has to the German Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (NetzDG).
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Spain: Catalan government agrees to improve privacy in schools
The Catalan Department of Education has signed an agreement accepting the plan proposed by Xnet, EDRi member from Spain, titled “Privacy and Democratic Digitization of Educational Centers,” to guarantee the privacy of data and the democratic digitization of schools. The plan foresees the creation of a software-pack and protocols that ensure the educational establishments have alternatives to what until now seemed the only option: the technological dependence on Google and its attached elements, with worrying consequences on individual data.
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SHARE’s campaign bears fruit: Google appoints Serbian representatives
Serbian citizens can now bring their objections and requests regarding Google’s use of their private data to the tech giant’s new representative in the country.
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Competition law: Big Tech mergers, a dominance tool
This is the third article in a series dealing with competition law and Big Tech. The aim of the series is to look at what competition law has achieved when it comes to protecting our digital rights, where it has failed to deliver on its promises, and how to remedy this.
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Google: seizing a crisis to legitimise mass surveillance?
Even in times of Corona, Google follows you wherever you go. The company collects and processes all our location data en masse and can thus graph how well we adhere to the imposed measures.
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Stalked by your digital doppelganger?
In this fourth installment of EDRi’s facial recognition and fundamental rights series, we explore what could happen if facial recognition collides with data-hungry business models and 24/7 surveillance.
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Facebook and Google asked to appoint representatives in Serbia
Three months before the new Serbian Law on Personal Data Protection becomes applicable, EDRi member SHARE Foundation asked 20 data companies from around the world – including Google and Facebook – to appoint representatives in Serbia as required by the new law. This is crucial for providing Serbian citizens and competent authorities with a contact […]
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Hey Google, where does the path lead?
If you do not know the directions to a certain place, you use a digital device to find your way. With our noses glued to the screen, we blindly follow the instructions of Google Maps, or its competitor. But do you know which way you are being led?
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Google-Huawei case highlights the importance of free software
Google denies the Chinese IT giant Huawei access to Google’s proprietary components of the Android mobile operating system, which threatens IT security. This highlights the importance of free software for technology users, public bodies, and businesses.
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Google fined 1,5 billion euro for abusive online ad practices
On 20 March, the European Commission imposed yet another massive fine, 1,5 billion euro, on Google. The Commission Directorate-General for Competition stated that the data company has abused its dominant position in the online advertising market by imposing restrictive contracts with third-party websites that prevented rivals from placing their search adverts on these websites.
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