surveillance
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Surveillance laws fall far short of fundamental rights standards
On 23 October, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) published the second volume of its study on surveillance and its impact on fundamental rights. This study comes following the request of the European Parliament (EP) for information on the consequences of surveillance for fundamental rights. The Agency notes that “the mere existence of […]
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Leak: Three EU countries join forces for restrictions & copyright chaos
Leaked documents concerning the Copyright Directive show that France, Spain and Portugal have joined forces in the Council of the European Union to attack the cornerstones of internet freedom in Europe. The documents show that the three countries propose elevating fighting copyright violations to a special status – above combating terrorism, child abuse and serious […]
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Success Story: A win on Austrian surveillance legislation
The security debate in many countries shows an alarming trend towards restrictions of fundamental rights that liberal societies have codified in the past centuries. Particularly in the field of surveillance, recent legislation often goes beyond what has been deemed constitutional by courts and lacks any fact-based justification as to how those measures are supposed to […]
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Tear down the tracking wall
It has become a daily routine: “consenting to” being tracked, on the basis of meaningless explanations (or no explanation at all) before you’re allowed access to a website or online service. It’s about time to set limits to this tracking rat race.
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The privacy movement and dissent: Art
This is the third blogpost of a series, originally published by EDRi member Bits of Freedom, that explains how the activists of a Berlin-based privacy movement operate, organise, and express dissent. The series is inspired by a thesis by Loes Derks van de Ven, which describes the privacy movement as she encountered it from 2013 […]
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Human Rights Court sets limits on right to monitor employees
On 5 September 2017, the Grand Chamber of the European Court for Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled on the Bărbulescu v. Romania case. It found that there was a breach of the right to family life and correspondence (Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights), as claimed by Mr Bărbulescu. Mr Bărbulescu was fired […]
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Cross-border access to data: EDRi delivers international NGO position to Council of Europe
Today, 18 September 2017, a global coalition of civil society organisations, led by European Digital Rights (EDRi), submitted to the Council of Europe its comments on how to protect human rights when developing new rules on cross-border access to electronic evidence (“e-evidence”). The Council of Europe is currently preparing an additional protocol to the Cybercrime […]
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Five things the online tracking industry gets wrong
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Europe, one of the loudest enemies of the e-Privacy Regulation, is the association of online tracking and adverting companies. On 7 September, IAB Europe published a report titled: “Europe Online: An experience driven by advertising”. In the report, some of the key issues are clearly displayed, but some are hidden […]
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Denmark: Targeted ANPR data retention turned into mass surveillance
Since mid 2016, Denmark has a nationwide automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system with stationary cameras at 24 locations and mobile cameras mounted on 48 police cars. The ANPR system is currently being integrated with POL-INTEL, the new Danish system for intelligence-led policing (predictive policing), which is supplied by Palantir Technologies. Expansion of the ANPR […]
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Netherlands: Sharing of travel data violated students’ privacy
It was all over the news on 22 August 2017: Translink, the company responsible for the Dutch public transport card “OV-chipkaart” had been passing student travel data to the Education Executive Agency responsible for student finance in the Netherlands (DUO). DUO uses this data to figure out whether students who claim to live on their […]
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Controversial testing of facial recognition software in Germany
At the end of August 2017, German police has been testing a facial recognition software at Südkreuz train station in Berlin. The system was tested on 300 volunteers. The goal was to evaluate the accuracy of the software in recognising and distinguishing them from the crowd – a feature that the police hopes to ultimately […]
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Stalking is easy with Facebook, and now even easier with Snapchat
We seem to get more and more accustomed to using apps that can easily track our movements. It is convenient to simply share your location with friends, instead of sending messages or calling to arrange where to meet. But are you aware of when and how you are giving the companies an insight into our […]
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