EDRi launched today, 9 October 2013, with expert input from the Transnational Institute and the Corporate Europe Observatory "The Lobbyists' Charter" - a parody of the efforts of the US and European Commission to grant industry lobbyists impressive powers to restrict democratic decision-making now and in the future, as part of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Coincidentally, the New York Times published yesterday, on 8 October 2013, information about the extent to which industry lobbyists had been involved in the European Commission's preparations for TTIP,
Enjoy the text at
http://www.lobbycharter.eu/
European Officials Consulted Business Leaders on Trade Pact (8.10.2013)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/business/international/european-offi...
On 10 October 2013, the winner of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought will be announced by the Conference of Presidents, as chosen by members of three committees of the European Parliament (AFET, DEVE and DROI).
The Prize, bearing the name of the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, has been awarded every year since 1988 to individuals and organisations for efforts in defending human rights and freedom of expression.
Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower, has been nominated and shortlisted for the award, for his exposure of the vast state sponsored surveillance programme, known as PRISM, affecting millions of people around the world, including foreign presidents, companies and even EU institutions.
EDRi, together with other 22 European non-governmental organisations protecting fundamental rights, including the freedom of expression and information, have sent a letter to the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament to support the selection of Edward Snowden for the Sakharov Prize: “Edward Snowden’s recent disclosures have triggered a necessary and long-overdue public debate in the United States and beyond about the acceptable boundaries of surveillance in a democratic state and about the legitimacy and proportionality of counter-terrorism intelligence activities. The revelations also have prompted debates in the European Union.”
The signatories of the letter consider that awarding the Prize to Snowden “would give a clear signal to the world that the EU values and protects those who are attacked for speaking out on violations of human rights.“
"So far Edward Snowden has received neither recognition for his courageous deeds nor support from the European Union collectively, from any individual Member State or from any single European institution.
As European citizens we believe that the Sakharov Prize would be the best way to change this undesirable state of affairs. Therefore we strongly encourage you to award the Sakharov Prize to Edward Snowden in honour of his courage and commitment to values that the Prize represents.”
Open letter by 23 European organisations in support of Snowden's
nomination for the Sakharov prize (9.10.2013)
http://www.edri.org/snowden-sakharov
From Sakharov to Snowden: Why Edward Snowden should receive the 2013
Sakharov Prize (26.09.2013)
http://www.article19.org/join-the-debate.php/111/view/
Eben Moglen supports Snowden for Sakharov Prize (6.09.2013)
http://vimeo.com/76264658
Edward Snowden shortlisted for EU's Sakharov prize (1.10.2013)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24347225
On 2 October 2013, EDRi signed a joint letter together with other civil society groups and organisations (CCIA, EDIMa, EuroISPA, EEA and EMOTA) asking the competent EU institutions to act on the amendments to the draft Regulations on Market Surveillance and Product Safety that could have far-reaching consequences affecting online commerce and Internet intermediaries freedom.
The letter asks not to extend the scope of the Regulation to cover intellectual property, as that would undermine legal certainty and put an excessive burden on businesses, particularly SMEs.
Also, the text points to a number of amendments that would undermine the principle of technology neutrality and would specifically burden e-commerce by singling out ‘online’ trade and seeking to impose far-reaching and inappropriate obligations on intermediaries, by asking them obligations of general monitoring. This would be contradictory to the current European legislation, the Charter of Human Rights and recent SABAM rulings from the European Court of Justice.
Joint letter on Market Surveillance and Product Safety Regulation
(2.10.2013)
http://www.edri.org/files/Marketsurveillance071013.pdf
Following Edward Snowden’s revelations, EDRi-member Open Rights Group, Big Brother Watch and English PEN, together with German internet "hacktivist" and academic Constanze Kurz, have launched a legal challenge to the UK's internet surveillance activities before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), on behalf in all Internet users in UK and US.
The challengers consider the large surveillance programs such as Prism (NSA program) and Tempora (UK program) are in breach of the Right to Privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The contestants argue that the law and practice in the UK do not ensure that interferences with that right are proportionate and in accordance with adequate and published legal standards.
“Recent disclosures that the government routinely taps, stores and sifts through our internet data have alarmed experts and internet users alike. It is alleged that the government has used the US's PRISM programme to access data on British citizens stored by US internet corporations. Through its own TEMPORA programme, the government is alleged to tap into the sub-ocean cables that carry the UK's and the EU's internet activities around the world and stores and sifts through that data, even if it is an email or a call between two British or EU citizens. Furthermore, the UK has granted the US National Security Agency unlimited access to this data.
These practices appear to have been authorized by government ministers on a routine 'rolling' basis, in secret. Existing oversight mechanisms (the Interception of Communications Commissioner, the Intelligence Services Commissioner, the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal) have failed. The legislation that is supposed to balance our rights with the interests of the security services is toothless,” the applicants say.
Initially, the applicants wrote to the UK Government on 3 July 2013 announcing that a judicial review challenge would be brought. The Government told them they had to make a complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (a tribunal that hears complaints against the intelligence services in secret). But, as in the case of Kennedy v UK the European Court of Human Rights ruled that applicants were not required to complain to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal before making an application to Strasbourg, the Applicants have issued proceedings in the European Court of Human Rights, which will determine whether UK law breaches international law.
The applicants are asking the Court to declare that UK's internet surveillance practices are disproportionate and to order the UK to adopt internet surveillance practices that recognise the rights to privacy.
New laws are necessary that require the surveillance to be proportionate, taht are overseen by judicial authorities acting in public and by adequately resourced and empowered regulators and that they allow for the notification of persons affected by the surveillance.
The organizers raised £20,000 in less than two days, to cover legal costs, but they are still accepting donations that will be used for awareness raising activities.
Legal challenge to UK Internet surveillance (3.10.2013)
https://www.privacynotprism.org.uk/news/2013/10/03/legal-challenge-to-...
Privacy not Prism
https://www.privacynotprism.org.uk/
According to documents collected by two Russian journalists, experts in security services, and shared with The Guardian, the Russian Government is prepared to deploy one of the most spectacular and invasive surveillance and spying system that will affect not only the athletes or spectators attending the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February 2014.
Procurement documents and tenders from Russian communication companies indicate that new telephone and internet spying capabilities will give FSB, the Russian state security organisation, the power to intercept any telephony or data traffic in Sochi. By using Sorm, Russia’s main system for intercepting communications, they will even be able to track sensitive words or phrases mentioned in emails, webchats and social media. Technical specifications set out by the Russian state telecoms agency also show that a deep packet inspection, made compatible with Sorm, will be installed, allowing intelligence agencies to filter users by certain keywords.
The two Russian journalists, Soldatov and Borogan, have discovered that the FSB has been working since 2010 to upgrade the Sorm system to be sure it can cope with the extra traffic during the Olympic Games. All telephone and ISP providers must buy and install, by law, Sorm boxes in their technology but they are denied access to the surveillance boxes.
Thus, the FSB can access data without even the knowledge of the provider and although, theoretically, the FSB needs a warrant in order to be able to intercept communications, there is no obligation to show it to anyone and telecom providers have no right to demand that the FSB show them the warrant.
As part of the so-called “Safe Sochi” project, there will be more than 5500 CCTV installed in Sochi, out of which 309 will be manned by the FSB.
Additionally, the Russian Big Brother represented by FSB and the Interior Ministry, will deploy a serious number of drones equipped with thermal vision, with capacities to plot map grid references of objects below and to transmit video and photographic images, live, to an operator’s screen.
In the light of these revelations, MEPs Sophie In'tveld, Birgit Sippel and Jan Albrecht have prepared a series of questions for the European Commission including whether the Commission is aware of the reports, whether there is an assessment of the surveillance operation in terms of purpose limitation, proportionality and compliance to the data protection rules and legislation of the Council of Europe and EU or an assessment of the risks of such total surveillance in terms of the recently adopted Russian laws monitoring activities of foreign NGOs and prohibiting 'gay propaganda.
A leaflet from the US state department's bureau of diplomatic security earlier this year was warning people travelling to the Olympic Games in Sochi to be cautious with communications."Business travellers should be particularly aware that trade secrets, negotiating positions, and other sensitive information may be taken and shared with competitors, counterparts, and/or Russian regulatory and legal entities," says the document.
Russia to monitor 'all communications' at Winter Olympics in Sochi
(6.10.2013)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/06/russia-monitor-communicat...
Surveillance at the Sochi Olympics 2014 (10.2013)
http://www.agentura.ru/english/projects/Project_ID/sochi/
Russia's Surveillance State (10.2013)
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/fall2013/Russia-surveillance
On 26 September 2013, Privacy International sent a letter to Ueli Maurer, Head of the Swiss Federal Department of Defence showing concern regarding the many companies asking for licenses to export surveillance technology from Switzerland.
Some media reports revealed in August 2013 that companies such as Gamma International (well known for the notorious malware soft FinFisher), are seeking licenses to export their technologies from Switzerland.
This has led to a quick reaction from Privacy International which wrote to more than 70 Swiss lawmakers, drawing attention to the issue.
The letter “detailed the human rights and foreign policies that Switzerland has championed internationally, including ensuring that businesses operating in Switzerland should exercise a duty of care in their global activities, and support for international standards in building social responsibility into their market-orientated activities. Gamma International clearly does not meet these standards.”
Councillor Balthasar Glättli form the Swiss Green Party (GPS) has placed a Motion in the Parliament for a debate that would lead to calling on the Swiss Government to set clear rules to prevent export from Switzerland of technologies that could be used for the surveillance and repression of dissidents.
In the letter sent to the Head of the Department for Defence, Ueli Maurer, who is also currently President of Switzerland for 2013 as well as to Didier Burkhalter, the current Swiss Foreign Minister and Vice-President of Switzerland, Privacy International expresses concerns that by approving such technologies for export, Switzerland's reputation of neutrality and the capacity to engage in conflict zones would be severely damaged.
It seems that the decision factors in this matter are the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sports (DDPS).
One of the issues is that there is no way of finding out what companies have tried to export malicious software to authoritarian regimes or whether they have been successful in their attempts, as SECO has no transparent list of export licenses for goods considered “material for war” and such a list does not include malware anyway.
Therefore, in their letter, Privacy International has asked several questions regarding the export licenses related to surveillance technology that have been required, approved and denied by SECO and whether such requests have been rejected based on human rights issues.
After Gamma revelations, Switzerland begins to debate export of
surveillance tech (4.10.2013)
https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/after-gamma-revelations-swit...
Privacy International letter to Ueli Maurer, Head of Federal Department
of Defence (26.09.2013)
https://www.privacyinternational.org/sites/privacyinternational.org/fi...
A new report shows again file-sharing is not detrimental to the entertainment industry sales, but quite the opposite. The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has released a new policy brief asking the UK Government to take into consideration more than the industry lobbying efforts when deciding on the copyright enforcement policies such as the Digital Economy Act (DEA).
The report states there is strong evidence that file-sharing is helping, rather than hurting the entertainment industries. There have been several research reports during the last years showing that file-sharing can have positive effects but they have always been counter-attacked by industry lobbyists. Now, the LSE report shows again that the entertainment industry is not damaged by file-sharing and that the researches show that file-sharers spend more money on entertainment than the others.
“Contrary to the industry claims, the music industry is not in terminal decline, but still holding ground and showing healthy profits. Revenues from digital sales, subscription services, streaming and live performances compensate for the decline in revenues from the sale of CDs or records,” says Bart Cammaerts, LSE Senior Lecturer and one of the report’s authors. “The music industry may be stagnating, but the drastic decline in revenues warned of by the lobby associations of record labels is not in evidence,” the report also states.
According to the report, there are several factors that can explain the decline in sales of recorded music (mainly CDs) such as “a squeeze on household expenditure on leisure goods and changing patterns of music consumption” and the “increasing revenue from live performances and growing digital revenues, including streaming services.”.
Moreover, according to the report, the enforcement of punitive legislation, such as the three strikes law in France, has not proven to be efficient. The authors of the report call on the UK Government to review the Digital Economy Act (DEA) and take into consideration all these findings by expanding the fair use and private copying exceptions for citizens. “Intervention to enforce copyright infringement legislation on individual file sharers risks stifling innovation and criminalises a thriving online participatory culture.”
In spite of the strong opposition and controversy, the House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Committee strongly advocates for the speeding up of the DEA implementation.
The authors of the report recommend a review of the legislation so that it may strike “a healthy balance among the interests of a range of stakeholders including those in the creative industries, Internet Service Providers and internet users.”
Piracy Isn’t Killing The Entertainment Industry, Scholars Show (3.10.2013)
http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-isnt-hurting-the-entertainment-industry...
LSE MPP Policy Brief 9 Copyright and Creation (3.10.2013)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/172985274/LSE-MPP-Policy-Brief-9-Copyright-a...
While the entire “Licences for Europe” project has been through a lot of turmoil and subsequently criticised for its lack of credibility, the so-called “Working Group 2 on User-Generated Content” takes absurdity to a whole new dictionary-changing level.
One of the “user” groups that was invited by the Commission, at the request of Neelie Kroes's DG Connect, is “Together against Cybercrime”. Even the name of the organisation raises warning flags – user-generated content (however that can be defined) is not a crime.
At the first meeting of the group, Yuliya Morenets was listed as giving a presentation and was on the agenda as representing the UN's Youth Internet Governance Forum (Youth IGF). The small problem there is that the Youth IGF does not take policy positions and, therefore, nobody could be mandated to speak for that group. However, Ms Morenets did not turn up to the first meeting. Her official replacement was a gentleman from a different organisation. Neither he nor the Commission could explain how, why or if Ms Morenets would have been expected to speak on behalf of the Youth IGF. Her replacement then explained he represented “Together Against Cybercrime” - but neither he nor the Commission could explain why or if it was appropriate for a cybercrime organisation to claim to be a user organisation in a forum which was not discussing cybercrime. However, he did speak, and his views were remarkably similar to those of industry.
At a subsequent meeting, Ms Morenets did finally turn up. After repeated questioning about if or how she could claim to represent the Youth IGF, she changed her affiliation and said that she was representing “Together Against Cybercrime”. As a representative of Internet users, her organisation is listed as “civil society” at an event she is organising at the Internet Governance Forum. On the other hand, her profile on the IGF website describes her as the CEO of her own consulting company, and explains that it is “a consultancy firm specialised in research of European funding opportunities and sponsoring, especially in the field of ICT programs and the protection of intellectual property rights.”
As a representative of the civil society, Ms Morenets explained at one
Licences for Europe meeting, that she either represented directly or had
consulted on user-generated content issues with:
- The European Association of Local Authorities
- “Vulnerable groups”
- The European users' delegation to ICANN
- One or more associations representing European libraries
- The European Consumer Centre Network (or possibly just the French and German parts)
- The Youth IGF (“as endorsed by the United Nations”)
Despite numerous requests during meetings of Licences for Europe for clarification of exactly who she represents and despite four e-mails since June of this year requesting clarification, none has been forthcoming until this article was written. On the other hand, we know that the Youth IGF could not have given her a mandate. Our feedback from the relevant organisations suggests that she represents neither of the main library associations nor she does not represent Euralo, if this is what she meant by the European user delegation at ICANN.
Regardless of what happens in the closing stages of the Licences for Europe project, the European Commission will publish press releases indicating that the project has been a huge success. This “success” will be a year-long series of meetings where civil society has abandoned the process, where participants were banned from speaking about reform of the legislative process, where “users” will have been “represented” by Ms Morenets, where the events were held under “Chatham House Rule” to avoid transparency about what was happening and where we are no closer to fixing the profound problems in the legislative framework for copyright in the EU than we were one year ago. If that is success, it is difficult to imagine what failure looks like.
Morenets IGF profile
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/component/chronocontact/?chro...
TaC as Civil Society
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/wks2013/workshop_2013_list_view.php?xps...
(contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)
EDRi Reponse to Green Paper Preparing for a Fully Converged Audiovisual
World: (26.09.2013)
http://www.edri.org/files/26092013-EDRi-GreenPaper-Converged-Audiovisu...
Belgian 'Royal Decree' Requires ISPs To Log All Sorts Of Info For A Year
(9.10.2013)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131009/01172724806/belgian-royal-de...
What's wrong with ANPR - No CCTV's report on number plate cameras in UK
(10.2013)
http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/docs/Whats%20Wrong%20With%20ANPR-No%20CCTV%2...
German Federal Intelligence Service taps up to 25 providers in Germany
(6.10.2013)
https://netzpolitik.org/2013/bundesnachrichtendienst-zapft-bis-zu-25-p...
Lowering Your Standards: DRM and the Future of the W3C (2.10.2013)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/lowering-your-standards
Italy: Draft Regulation on Copyright Protection on Electronic
Communication Networks (1.10.2013)
http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/37271/en/italy:-draft-...
14-18 October 2013, Athens, Greece
RIPE67 Meeting
https://ripe67.ripe.net/
21-27 October 2013, Worldwide
Open Access week
http://www.openaccessweek.org/events
22-25 October 2013, Bali, Indonesia
Internet Governance Forum 2013
http://igf2013.or.id/
24 October 2013, Ljubljana, Slovenia
The LAPSI 2.0 Conference: “The new PSI directive: What’s next?”
http://www.lapsi-project.eu/lapsi-20-conferences
25-27 October 2013, Siegen, Germany
Cyberpeace - FIfF Annual Meeting 2013
http://www.fiff.de/
19-20 November 2013, Berlin, Germany
Berlin Open Access Conference: 10th anniversary of the Berlin Declaration
http://www.berlin11.org/
27–30 December 2013, Hamburg, Germany
30C3 – 30th Chaos Communication Congress
http://events.ccc.de/2013/07/18/30c3-call-for-participation-en/
22-24 January 2014, Brussels, Belgium
CPDP 2014: Reforming data protection: The Global Perspective
http://www.cpdpconferences.org/
3-5 March 2014, San Francisco, California, USA
RightsCon: Silicon Valley
https://www.rightscon.org/
24-25 April 2014, Barcelona, Spain
SSN 2014: Surveillance Ambiguities & Assymetries
http://www.ssn2014.net/
28-29 April 2014, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
OER14: building communities of open practice
http://www.oer14.org/