The European Commission does not sufficiently understand the need for better AI law
The Dutch Senate shares the concerns Bits of Freedom has about the Artificial Intelligence Act and wrote a letter to the European Commission about the need to better protect people from harmful uses of AI such as through biometric surveillance. The Commission has given a response to this which is not exactly reassuring.
Filter resources
-
The European Commission does not sufficiently understand the need for better AI law
The Dutch Senate shares the concerns Bits of Freedom has about the Artificial Intelligence Act and wrote a letter to the European Commission about the need to better protect people from harmful uses of AI such as through biometric surveillance. The Commission has given a response to this which is not exactly reassuring.
Read more
-
Civil society calls on the EU to ban predictive AI systems in policing and criminal justice in the AI Act
40+ civil society organisations, led by Fair Trials and European Digital Rights (EDRi) are calling on the EU to ban predictive systems in policing and criminal justice in the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA).
Read more
-
CJEU Advocate General states that PNR Directive does not violate fundamental rights despite mass surveillance concerns from civil society
On 27 January, despite concerns from civil society and the CJEU having decided that the EU-Canada PNR agreement was incompatible in 2017, the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union stated that the EU Passenger Name Record (PNR) Directive was compatible with fundamental rights.
Read more
-
Technologies for border surveillance and control in Italy
This research points out that identification and categorisation systems for migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, rely on vast quantities of biometric data including fingerprints and facial images. It is, however, often difficult to assess how these procedures are managed. Upon identification, the aforementioned groups have limited knowledge and awareness about where and how their personal and biometric data are going to be stored and used, hindering them from countering the pressure that this flow of information puts on their subsequent living conditions in Italy and in the European Union.
Read more
-
Secret negotiations about Europol: the big rule of law scandal
In negotiations held behind closed doors, the Council of Member States and the European Parliament are about to torpedo all the efforts of the European data protection watchdog’s to hold Europol accountable for its illegal data practices.
Read more
-
Hide and Seek: Polish DPA agrees that people should be able to access their advertising profiles, but there’s no way to do so
Following EDRi member Panoptykon’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) complaint against one of the biggest Polish news website, Interia.pl - the Polish Data Protection Authority has confirmed that online publishers should give users access to their advertising profiles generated for the purposes of delivering behavioural ads.
Read more
-
Managed by Bots: surveillance of gig-economy workers
WIE’s recent ‘Managed by Bots’ report demonstrates that opaque algorithms dictate almost every aspect of gig economy employees’ work, offering them limited visibility or avenues for redress when a decision is made about them.
Read more
-
UN Special Rapporteurs challenge EU’s counter-terrorism plans
Through their communication, the Special Rapporteurs demonstrate how several existing and foreseen EU security measures fail to meet the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality, enshrined in European and international laws (such as the Regulation on preventing the dissemination of Terrorism Content Online and the processing by Europol of sensitive data for profiling purposes). The fatal flaw lies in the use of broad and undefined terms to justify extensive interferences in human rights.
Read more
-
Digital Dignity Document Pool
Digital technologies can have a profound effect on our societies, but sufficient attention is rarely given to how certain applications differentiate between, target and experiment on communities at the margins. This document pool gathers resources for those that are interested in learning about and contesting the harms to dignity and equality that arise from uses of technology and data.
Read more
-
Electronic Frontier Norway (EFN) reports “Shinigami Eyes” to the Norwegian DPA for violation of GDPR
EDRi member Electronic Frontier Norway (EFN) found that the use of the program “Shinigami Eyes” and the operation of the database it uses constitute multiple violations of the GDPR and its Norwegian implementation. The most egregious of these being the clear violation of Article 9 which prohibits the registrations of people’s political views, philosophical convictions and physical persons sexual relations or sexual orientations etc.
Read more
-
CJEU upholds strict requirements for law enforcement access to electronic communications metadata
Traffic and location data may allow precise conclusions to be drawn about the persons involved, e.g. their social relationships or the social environments frequented by them. In most cases, the CJEU has only allowed access to such data for serious crimes. However, the CJEU ruled that access to retained data is only allowed in cases of serious crime when the access implies a serious interference, and in all criminal cases when the access does not imply a serious interference.
Read more
-
Surveillance-based advertising: An industry broken by design and by default
Most online advertising today relies on huge amounts of personal data extracted from people without their knowledge. EDRi’s new guide book “Targeted Online” sheds light on this opaque data industry and explores how EU law should regulate it. This is the first blog post in a new series dedicated to the EU’s proposed Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.
Read more