Privacy
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Romania: Mandatory prepaid SIM registration ruled unconstitutional
The Romanian Constitutional Court (CCR) ruled on 16 September 2014 that a law that required the mandatory registration of all prepaid SIM cards and free WiFi users, is unconstitutional, as a whole. The Court reviewed the law as a result of the Romanian Ombudsman’s objection concerning its possible unconstitutionality. Several human rights NGOs asked the […]
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FNF 2014: Brussels privacy advocates summit to tackle surveillance, censorship, net discrimination
Between 26 and 29 September, the annual Freedom not Fear (FNF) conference and barcamp will take place in Brussels. As every year, the action days are challenging the false dichotomy that better security comes at a price: the abandonment of our privacy rights. On Friday evening, the event will be kicked off with a keynote […]
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Open letter to Google’s Advisory Council on the “right to be forgotten”
On 9 September, European and international civil rights organisations submitted an open letter (pdf) to Google’s Advisory Council on their assessment of the so-called “right to be forgotten”. The groups urge the Council’s members to avoid inadvertently delaying the adoption of the data protection reform package. They remind the members of the urgent need for […]
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Europe vs. Facebook class action attracts over 60 000 plaintiffs
Privacy activist Max Schrems, founder of the “Europe-v-Facebook” initiative, is known for his battles involving Internet social network giant Facebook. However, all the lawsuits he filed in Ireland haven’t led to meaningful outcomes, so far. Therefore, Mr. Schrems now takes a different approach, by suing Facebook Ireland Ltd. This time he has filed suit in […]
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Code Red, global initiative to support a reform of security services
More than two-dozen civil society activists from fourteen countries have joined the steering group of an ambitious global initiative to accelerate police and security services accountability. The project, Code Red, was conceived during the preparation of a report “A Crisis of Accountability” that was published in June 2014 on developments in the twelve months since […]
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Slovenia: Data retention unconstitutional, deletion of data ordered
The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia abrogated the data retention provisions of the Act on Electronic Communications (ZEKom-1) in its judgement U-I-65/13-19 of 3 July 2014 following the constitutional request lodged by the Information Commissioner in March 2013 and ECJ judgment of 8 April 2014 in Joined Cases C-293/12 and C-594/12. The Court […]
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Denmark about to implement a nationwide ANPR system
The Danish police is planning to implement a nationwide automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system over the next couple of years. The Danish newspaper Berlingske obtained the project description for the IT system through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and reported about the ANPR plans. The ANPR system will consist of mobile units […]
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Poland: Secret services escape citizens’ control
Poland celebrated its 25 years of democracy recently. In those two and a half decades, among other changes, most public institutions in Poland have got more or less used to citizens’ control. It has taken years of advocacy and watchdog activity, as well as a number of court cases to decide whether a given piece […]
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We are not accusing the German minister of interior of lying
On 30 June 2014, Germany’s Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière announced an initiative to help move forward the proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation. EDRi applauds this “initiative”, which comes after Germany has worked assiduously to stop progress in the Council. According to internal Council documents obtained by the Spiegel in December […]
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Romania: No communication without registration
Two bills initiated during the past month by the Romanian Government, with the direct and open support from the Romanian Secret Service (SRI), are attempting to kill any kind of electronic communication without prior identification and to expand dramatically the legal access to computer systems. The first bill aims to make the registration of all […]
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Supreme Court of the US on cell phone searches: get a warrant
In the court case Riley vs California, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) affirmed on 25 June what many digital rights activists have been telling a long time: Our mobile phones, especially smartphones, have become such an extension of ourselves that warrantless searches of them violate fundamental rights. Not only that, SCOTUS was […]
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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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