Telecommunication data retention
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Italy: five years data retention
On 28 January 2004, the Italian Lower House approved of a governmental decree-law on mandatory data retention by telephone and internet companies. Government issued the decree on 24 December 2003, without any prior parliamentary debate. All data about electronic communications must now be stored for a period of 5 years. According to the privacy-group ALCEI, […]
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Russian plans to introduce new ID-system
The Russian government is considering a new system of personal registration for all citizens. In 2006 all Russians will be assigned a unique universal identifier. On 15 January 2004 the deputy minister of economical development Andrei Sharonov told journalists that the original proposal had been prepared by his ministry and the government supported this idea. […]
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PNR: Bolkestein's diplomacy and anger Belgian DPA
MEP Marco Cappato has revealed a letter EU Commissioner Bolkestein sent to Tom Ridge, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. The letter was sent on 18 December, only two days after Bolkestein had given his presentation in which he tried to mislead the European Parliament on the true nature of the agreement on the transfer […]
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PNR: Bolkestein misleads European Parliament
Commissioner Frits Bolkestein concealed important details on the draft agreement reached with the USA on the transfer of Passenger Name Record Data (PNR) to the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection when reporting to two Committees of the European Parliament four weeks ago. This is what Bolkestein’s spokesman Jonathan Todd has admitted in an […]
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Schengen information system goes biometric
With the planned inclusion of two biometric identifiers into EU Member States’ passports and ID Cards as well as Visa to the EU, it was only a question of time when the first plans to store these identifiers in an EU-wide database would be announced. The announcement came shortly before Christmas: Biometric data will, according […]
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Data Dutch KLM passengers handed over to NASA
The US airline company Nothwest Airlines voluntarily handed over the personal data of possibly as much as 10 million US and European passengers to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Northwest Airlines has an alliance with the Dutch airline company KLM. The two companies have integrated their reservation systems and operate code-sharing flights from […]
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French Big Brother Awards 4 February
For the fourth consecutive year, French civil liberty activists will present the French Big Brother Awards during an Orwell Party in Paris on Wednesday 4 February 2004. Since Privacy International presented the first Big Brother Awards in 1998 to government agencies, private companies and individuals who have excelled in the violation of privacy, an international […]
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Hustinx new EU data protection commissioner
Peter Hustinx, the Dutch data protection commissioner, will be elected today as the new EU data protection commissioner. The Conference of Presidents, composed of the heads of the Political Groups in the European Parliament, decided to back-down from their original idea to give the position to the Spanish magistrate Joaquín Bayo Delgado. He will now […]
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PNR talks between EU and US move slowly
Talks between the European Commission and the US department of Homeland Security about airline passenger data are moving very slowly. Commissioner Frits Bolkestein told the European Parliament that the US are only willing to compromise on a few disagreements. Most importantly the US do not want to limit the use of airline passenger data to […]
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FIPR workshop on snooping-laws in the UK
On 22 October, EDRI members FIPR and Privacy International held a public meeting to assess proposed government legislation to retain and snoop on information about the phone and Internet activity of everyone in the UK. Speakers from the government side tried to convince a sceptical audience that the plans were a necessary and proportionate response […]
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EU court of justices rules against personal data on website
Pointing to different persons on a website and making them recognisable by naming them or in any other manner is an act of processing of personal data and must therefore be dealt with under EU Directive 95/46/EC. That’s the substance of a recent judgement of the European Court of Justice (reference number C-101/01; case Bodil […]
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New telecommunication law in Germany
On 15 October the German Federal Government adopted a draft new telecommunication act. The draft aims, inter alia, at implementing the European Directive on privacy and electronic communications (2002/58/EC), but will not introduce the spam-ban described in Article 13 of the Directive. In Germany spam will be banned through an update of the Act against […]
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