Telecommunication data retention
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FBI spies on US civil rights groups
The renowned US civil rights organisation ACLU has sent out an alarming press release about FBI-surveillance of their activities and of other renowned peaceful groups such as Greenpeace and United for Peace and Justice. The FBI has collected more than 1.100 pages of documents on the ACLU since 2001 and the ACLU is urging the […]
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Europarl protests against UK push for EU data retention
On Wednesday morning 13 July 2005 UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke met with the European Parliament Committee on Citizens’ Rights, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE). His plan to push through data retention during the UK presidency of the European Council, no matter in what pillar, met with great protest. The Social-Democrats, the Greens and the […]
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UK ISPs voluntarily preserve internetdata
Immediately after the London attacks on 7 July 2005, the National High Tech Crime Unit sent an e-mail to the UK provider association and to the London Internet Exchange asking for voluntary help in preserving traffic data of telephone and internet, but also the contents of e-mails, voice-mails and SMS. Some technicians outside of the […]
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Two opposing court verdicts on file-sharers
While the Irish High Court set a precedent on 9 July by ordering two ISPs to hand-over the name and address data of 17 file-sharers, a few days later a Dutch judge forbade the hand-over of contact details of 41 customers. In both cases the music industry used the services of the US-based company MediaSentry. […]
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Germany: biometric passports in November
The German Upper House approved on 8 July the introduction of biometric passports. The ‘ePass’ will contain a contactless chip (RFID) that will hold a digital frontal picture of the bearer’s face. In the future, two fingerprints, one from each hand, will be included – probably starting in 2007. The issuing of the biometric passports […]
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Another Italian community server violated?
After the recent discovery that the Italian Autistici/Inventati server had been seized by the Italian police and a backdoor had been probably installed to allow for easier monitoring of all communication going through it, looks like another Italian community server could have endured the same fate. On Monday 27 June 2005, two members of FLUG […]
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EU passenger data possibly used commercially
The US Transportation Security Administration is facing a scandal involving data being swapped forth and back with a private company engaged in data brokering. As Associated Press reported, the TSA, which is an agency of the US Department of Homeland Security, is not only storing commercial data about domestic air passengers. It has also passed […]
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Heated debate on ID cards in the UK
On 28 June the UK government narrowly won a vote on its identity card proposals in the House of Commons, seeing its majority halved to just 31. The previous day the UK Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, expressed strong concerns over the government’s plans for a biometric national identity card and database. He particularly criticised the […]
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French NGOs: no consensus possible on biometric ID-card
A coalition of 6 French organisations against the French biometric card project INES (among them EDRI-member IRIS, see EDRI-gram 3.11) remains convinced that ‘no consensus is possible’ to accept the project if modified according to the suggestions made by the Internet Rights Forum (‘Forum des droits sur l’Internet’ or FDI, a private association mainly funded […]
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Police backdoor discovered in Italian alternative server
On 21 June 2005 the Italian collective Austistici/Inventati discovered a major police backdoor in their server. The server hosts a large number of websites, mailboxes, mailing lists and Internet services for NGOs, grassroots activists and public interest associations. The backdoor was installed over a year ago, on 15 June 2004 by the Italian “Polizia Postale” […]
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Belgian police doubles wiretapping
The Belgian police has doubled the number of judicial telephone wiretaps in 2004. From 1.336 intercepts in 2003, they went to 2.562 intercepts in 2004. In 2002, the number was below 900. In Belgium, an intercept law was adopted in 1994 that allowed for telephony wiretaps, if authorised by an investigating magistrate and for a […]
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US delay for biometric passports
The US has signalled that it will modify its biometric passport requirements for travellers from Visa Waiver countries. EU countries have been struggling to meet an October 2005 deadline set by the US to introduce new passports with biometric identifiers. The 2002 US Border Security Act demands from 27 countries the inclusion of chips with […]
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