surveillance
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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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Dutch Senate votes in favour of dragnet surveillance powers
On 11 July 2017, the Dutch Senate passed the bill for the new Intelligence and Security Services Act. With the Senate vote, a years-long political battle has come to an end: the secret services have been given dragnet surveillance powers.
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PNR: EU Court rules that draft EU/Canada air passenger data deal is unacceptable
Today, on 26 July 2017, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) confirmed that the EU/Canada deal on collection of air travellers’ data and sharing it breaches European law. This is the third time that the European Court has ruled against arrangements for mandatory storage of personal data. This is good news for […]
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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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Dissent in the privacy movement: whistleblowing, art and protest
This is the first 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 to […]
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UN Rapporteur demands respect for freedom of expression online
The United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression David Kaye has released a new report, which gives an overview of the problems for freedom of expression and opinion in the Telecommunications and Internet Access Sector. The report also provides general recommendations for states […]
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Irish police phone tapping undermines citizens’ rights
An Garda Síochána, the Irish police force has fallen, yet again, under public scrutiny for privacy violations of innocent citizens. An investigation by the Irish Independent newspaper has found that members of the public had their phones tapped without proper justification. The widespread phone tapping was revealed after a senior officer tried to highlight his […]
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Big Data for Big Impact – but not only a positive one
Technology has changed and keeps dramatically changing our everyday life by transforming the human species to advanced networked societies. To celebrate this digital revolution, 17 May is dedicated to the “World Telecommunication and Information Society Day” (WTISD-17). The theme for this year’s celebration is “Big Data for Big Impact”. Not so surprisingly, the buzzword “big […]
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Danish Defence Intelligence Service will get access to PNR data
Denmark does not take part in the EU Passenger Name Record (PNR) Directive since Denmark has an opt-out from the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) area of the European Union. Instead, Denmark has a national PNR system which has been developed gradually on the legislative side since 2006. The practical implementation by Danish authorities has […]
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German intelligence agency violates freedom of the press
EDRi observer Reporters Without Borders Germany is appalled by the apparently targeted surveillance of foreign journalists by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency. As reported by the Spiegel, the BND spied on at least 50 telephone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses belonging to journalists or newsrooms around the world in the years following 1999. […]
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Civil society letter: Without reforms in US surveillance laws, the Privacy Shield must be suspended
A coalition of 17 global civil society organisations, including many EDRi members, wrote a letter to the European Commissioner for Justice and Consumers, Věra Jourová, to express the need for a reform of US surveillance laws. The coalition of civil rights group claim that Europe must suspend the data-transfer arrangement (the EU-US Privacy Shield) unless the […]
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