surveillance
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Romania: Mass surveillance project disguised as eGovernment
The Romanian Intelligence Services (SRI) has recently been granted EU funds for the project “SII Analytics” to acquire software and hardware for “consolidating and assuring eGovernment interoperability between public information systems”. The project seems to aim at gathering all major state owned databases (e.g. citizens and company registry, health card data, fiscal data) in SRI’s […]
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New documents reveal Europol’s plans to increase surveillance
The Europol work programme until the end of the year 2016 reveals that the agency’s goals are to gradually expand its surveillance capacities, to facilitate cross-border access to data, and increase the use of biometrics. In August 2016, the German news site Netzpolitik.org leaked a document (pdf) which provides a neat overview of Europol’s planned […]
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German surveillance laws: placebos, poison, and also bad sport
The German parliament, the Bundestag, voted in favour of two contentious surveillance laws in July 2016. These are not only disappointing with regard to their content but also as cases of dubious parliamentary procedure. Those observing international politics may be familiar with the phrase “burying bad news”. The phrase gained notoriety through leaked emails from […]
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e-Privacy Directive revision: An analysis from the civil society
After the approval of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Directive for Law Enforcement Agencies (LEDP), the reform of data protection and privacy in the European Union (EU) now reaches the next step: the review of the e-Privacy Directive (Directive 2002/58/EC on privacy and electronic communications).
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Swiss civil society struggles against digital surveillance laws
In June 2016, Swiss civil society activists are redoubling their efforts to collect signatures in support of a referendum vote on the revision of a surveillance law best known under the German acronym BÜPF, “federal law concerning surveillance of postal communications and telecommunications”. This revision would legalise surveillance by means of IMSI catchers (fake relay […]
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European Digital Rights at re:publica 2016
Last week, the re:publica, “Europe’s most exciting conference on Internet and society”, took place in Berlin. EDRi’s members and observers were out in force and participated in the 10th anniversary of the re:publica. We’ve collected all talks by our network for you (in chronological order): Fight for your digital rights (in German) Link to re:publica […]
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Dutch dragnet surveillance bill leaked
On 29 April, the final text for the Dutch dragnet surveillance bill was leaked. It turns out that Minister of the Dutch Interior Ronald Plasterk is still bent on granting the secret services the power to carry out bulk interception of innocent citizens’ communications.
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DFRI thrown out of conference on surveillance cameras
Every year about 200 representatives from the Swedish security industry meet to discuss security cameras. This year’s conference was particularly interesting. The Swedish government has appointed a commission to investigate possible changes in existing laws to make it easier to get permission to use surveillance cameras in public spaces, schools and workplaces. These cameras are […]
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New data protection law in Turkey
Turkish Parliament enacted the Data Protection Law on 24 March 2016 and it entered into force on 7 April. There had been several attempts for enacting the Law over the course of more than 10 years, but all of the bills were later withdrawn by the AKP – Justice and Development Party (the ruling party […]
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Huge protest against corruption & surveillance in Macedonia
The political crisis in Macedonia deepened on 12 April when the President Gjorgi Ivanov announced that he would issue a blanket pardon to 56 politicians suspected of involvement in serious crimes. Over the last eight days, tens of thousands of citizens took to the streets of the capital city Skopje and about a dozen other […]
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Press Release: Vote on Data Protection and Passenger Name Record package
The European Parliament looks set to adopt two proposals on data protection and a proposal on the profiling of air passengers (PNR, Passenger Name Records) tomorrow, 14 April. The two data protection proposals seek to protect our fundamental right to privacy. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) covers the protection of personal data across all […]
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Special report: Poland’s secret services are still using and abusing telecom and Internet data
With almost two million requests for telecommunication data and more than two thousand requests for Internet data concerning Polish citizens in 2015, it is clear that the access to metadata in Poland by the country’s secret services is still out of control. Compared to 2014, the Polish Panoptykon Foundation found that the number of requests […]
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