Telecommunication data retention
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New anti-terror bill proposed in Denmark
As a follow up to the latest anti-terror plan of action (49 proposals) of November 2005, the Danish government is now proposing new anti-terror legislation. In the current round of public hearing, massive criticism has been raised by NGOs, legal experts, Danish industry, telecom providers, and from a number of political parties, including the Liberal […]
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German Constitutional Court ruling on seizure of emails
On 2 March 2006, the German Constitutional Court has ruled that emails and mobile phone text messages that have already been transmitted and are still stored on the recipient’s device do not fall under the special constitutional protections for telecommunication privacy. The decision was made after a German judge had her computer seized by law […]
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Results data protection inspection EURODAC kept secret
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has completed a first inspection of the central unit of EURODAC, but the complete results of the report have not been made public, arguing sensitivity of the information. EURODAC is a community-wide information technology system for the comparison of the fingerprints of asylum seekers, which was adopted on 11 […]
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Data Retention Directive adopted by JHA Council
The Ministers at the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council, following an agreement reached by the Council on 1 and 2 December 2005, adopted the Data Retention Directive on 21 February 2006. The Directive was adopted by the European Parliament on 14 December 2006 after the Council threatened to push for its own much tougher […]
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Extremely high Romanian wiretapping costs
According to declarations of Romanian public officials, during the last month, the total costs of the specialized police services for legal wiretapping in 2005 was at least 118 million euros, an amount very close to the annual national budget for scientific research. As Catalin Harnagea, former director of a Romanian Secret Service unit, declared the […]
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German anonymiser service – now on pay
AN.ON, the German anonymiser service developed by the university of Dresden and the regional data protection authority of Schleswig Holstein, enabling its users to surf anonymously via a Java-webproxy has no more public funding this year. Although it will be possible for users to surf free via AN.ON, high performance services will be provided against […]
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Dispute over data retention costs in Czech Republic
The Czech authorities are currently in a debate with telecommunication companies over the exact amounts they will have to pay to reimburse the costs related to the new data retention legislation that came into force at the middle of the last year. The Czech republic already adopted data retention legislation in the middle of 2005, […]
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German Wikipedia back on the Internet
The German version of the worldwide encyclopaedia Wikipedia was offline for three days, after a legal complaint filed by the parents of a hacker who’s real name was mentioned online. Tron was a German hacker and phreaker who found a controversial death in 1998. Amongst other things, Tron broke the security of the German phonecard […]
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EU Visa Database under scrutiny of the European Data Protection
In a public opinion from 20 January 2006, Mr. Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor, was very critical about the wide access possibilities the European Commission wanted to give to the new Visa Information System. The Commission published its “Proposal for a Council Decision concerning access for consultation of the Visa Information System (VIS)” […]
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French anti-terrorism law not anti-constitutional
The French constitutional council judged on 19 January 2006, that the new national anti-terrorism law, submitted by the French Senators, was not anti-constitutional. The Senators were particularly concerned with two provisions of this law. The first one was the provision allowing the police to obtain communication data without any judicial order, in order to “prevent […]
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Irish ISPs to give File-sharers details
On Tuesday 24 January the Irish High Court made an order requiring three ISPs to hand over the personal details of 49 alleged file-sharers. This decision follows a similar decision in July 2005, and was made by the same judge (Kelly J.) in essentially identical terms, including an undertaking that the information would only be […]
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Slovenian Intelligence Agency performed illegal eavesdropping
The Slovenian constitutional court issued a decision on 8 December 2005 ascertaining that, in 1996, SOVA (Slovenian intelligence agency) illegally performed eavesdropping to a suspected person later sentenced for unjustified production and trading of drugs. The most aggravating evidences for the defendant were the telephone conversation recordings that SOVA made for the police. The eavesdropping […]
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