surveillance
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How Europol’s reform enables ‘NSA-style’ surveillance operations
“More than 100 million”. That’s the number of encrypted messages that French and Dutch law enforcement announced they had collected after infiltrating Encrochat in 2020, a company selling encrypted communication services and devices, writes EDRi's Chloé Berthélémy.
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How online ads discriminate
The risks and harms that are associated with hyper-targeted online ads have been widely documented. Yet, the same amount of attention has not been shown to the many ways in which harms and risks of online advertising are unequally distributed, and how targeted online advertising can have discriminatory effects. This is the focus of EDRi’s newly launched report.
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Panoptykon ends campaign against uncontrolled surveillance reaching 3M people
1 out of 5 Poles are aware of the constantly growing powers of the Polish secret service. And this lack of knowledge from the public leaves the door open for further expansion of the powers of secret service authorities.
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Europol inches closer to increasing its powers despite lacking accountability
Europol was caught breaking the law and developing new initiatives without any proper legal basis (e.g. Europol’s innovation lab). Many proposed changes to Europol's mandate show an attempt to legalise the agency’s unlawful activities. In addition, this revision is happening even before the first implementation evaluation of Europol’s Regulation, planned for 2022, has been carried out. Without this evaluation, it is impossible to assess whether the current rules impede the fulfilment of the Agency’s missions and whether its working practices respect fundamental rights.
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The urgent need to #reclaimyourface
The rise of automated video surveillance is often touted as a quick, easy, and efficient solution to complex societal problems. In reality, roll-outs of facial recognition and other biometric mass surveillance tools constitute a systematic invasion into people’s fundamental rights to privacy and data protection. Like with uses of toxic chemicals, these toxic uses of biometric surveillance technologies need to be banned across Europe.
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European Court on Human Rights Bought Spy Agencies’ Spin on Mass Surveillance
For good or ill, and I believe for ill more than for good, with the present judgment the Strasbourg Court has just opened the gates for an electronic “Big Brother” in Europe. EDRi's member Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) discusses the recent European Court on Human Rights' decision that the British and Swedish surveillance regimes violate privacy.
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UK: European Court decision in Big Brother Watch case does not go far enough to protect free expression and privacy
The finding of a violation is testimony to the doggedness of civil society in holding the UK government to account in the wake of the Snowden revelations about mass surveillance programmes. EDRI's member ARTICLE 19 welcomes the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (European Court) in Big Brother and others vs the UK, which ruled that the United Kingdom’s bulk interception of communications violated the right to privacy and failed to protect journalists in breach of the right to freedom of expression.
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Human rights groups win European Court of Human Rights claim on UK mass surveillance regime
Eight year legal battle against UK mass surveillance programmes exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden culminates in victory for privacy. EDRi's member Privacy International worked actively to make this happen.
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Can a COVID-19 face mask protect you from facial recognition technology too?
Mass facial recognition risks our collective futures and shapes us into fear-driven societies of suspicion. This got folks at EDRi and Privacy International brainstorming. Could the masks that we now wear to protect each other from Coronavirus also protect our anonymity, preventing the latest mass facial recognition systems from identifying us?
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France’s highest court validates mass surveillance in the long term
On 21 April, the Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative court, released its decision on mass telecom surveillance. EDRi's member La Quadrature du Net (LQDN) shares its first impressions on this disconcerting ruling which puts the European Union’s legal order at risk.
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New AI law proposal calls out harms of biometric mass surveillance, but does not resolve them
On 21 April 2021, the European Commission put forward a proposal for a new law on artificial intelligence. With it, the Commission acknowledged some of the numerous threats biometric mass surveillance poses for our freedoms and dignity. However, despite its seemingly good intentions, the proposed law falls seriously short on our demands and does not in fact impose a ban on most cases of biometric mass surveillance – as urged by EDRi and the Reclaim Your Face coalition.
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Upcoming judgment against mass surveillance in France
On Wednesday 21 April, the Conseil d'Etat (France's highest administrative court) will issue its final decision in the most important case that EDRi's observer La Quadrature du Net (LQDN) has ever brought against the intelligence services. This will be the end of six years of proceedings, dozens of briefs and countless twists and turns that have made LQDN what it is today.
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