Tomorrow 3 June at 13.00 PM the ministers of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA Council) will give a press conference about their achievements with regards to the introduction of mandatory data retention, item B5 on the agenda. On 7 June 2005 the European Parliament will vote in plenary on the report from Alexander Alvaro. The report finds the proposal disproportionate and ineffective and not in compliance with the fundamental principle of the presumption of innocence. It is widely expected that the report will be adopted with a large majority, thus sending a clear signal to Council and Commission that the Parliament is angry about its advisory role and wishes a much stronger public debate about the need, necessity and costs of data retention. On 26 May 2005 the Europarl LIBE commission already adopted this report almost unanimously, with only 1 vote against.
The results of the JHA Council will be closely monitored in the Netherlands, since both chambers of the Dutch parliament have explicitly forbidden Justice minister Donner to take part in any agreement on the issue. Tuesday 31 May 2005 the Senate sent a message forbidding the minister to take part in any debate about data retention until he meets the Senate again on 21 June, today the Lower House adopted a similar motion calling on the government not take part in any deliberations until the results of the first (!) research in Europe into the need and necessity of mandatory data retention have been published and discussed in parliament.
This research was commissioned by Donner in February 2005 from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. The results are expected to surface in the meeting with the Senate on 21 June 2005. Meanwhile, the JHA council is wrestling with the deadline it set itself in March 2004, to reach agreement on a framework decision by June 2005. This deadline might explain why the Council has ignored the serious allegations that the draft framework decision lacks a legal basis. Both the legal service of the JHA Council, as well as the European Commission and the Europarl legal commission have stated that this decision belongs in a proper democratic procedure, initiated by the Commission and with full co-decision rights for the European Parliament. Since the proposal has such an enormous impact on the privacy of all EU citizens and causes such unforeseeable costs and effects on the competition between the EU and the rest of the world, the decision clearly belongs in the first pillar.
But the working groups of the JHA Council have not stopped producing proposals about the kind of data. In the last public document the Presidency suggests that the Council could agree today on a minimum term of at least 12 months and agree on the scope (any kind of criminal offence) and exchange of data amongst member states.
The European Commission is now ready to finally launch its own directive proposal, according to comments made by the EU Commissioner for Justice Frattini and the EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Reding. In an interview with EUPolitix Frattini announced he would launch the proposal 'within very few weeks', but also said he would give the JHA Council brief information today or tomorrow.
The suspense could not be higher, since Reding stresses the need for proportionality and warns "the step could spark a clash with member states" while Frattini seems convinced that Commission and Council agree on the substance and a compromise can be worked out. "There will be, in other words, a possible proposal on the substance by correcting the legal basis", he said. Reding on the other hand added the promise that the Commission will request an impact analysis of the legislation to make sure it is proportionate.
Live broadcast of press conference JHA Council (03.06.2005, 13:00 PM) http://europa.eu.int/comm/ebs/schedule.cfm
EUPolitix.com: Interview with EU Commissioner for justice Frattini (31.05.2005) http://www.eupolitix.com/EN/Interviews/200505/a7b5adcd-f68b-474a-b56d-...
EU Commission says to propose phone data logging (31.05.2005) http://tinyurl.com/a69vw
European Parliament procedure and timetable on data retention (ongoing) http://www2.europarl.eu.int/oeil/file.jsp?id=5215602
Alvaro report (18.04.2005)
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2005/may/ep-data-ret-alvaro-report.pdf
The Higher Regional Court of Hamburg (Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht) has squashed an earlier verdict forcing an ISP to hand over data about customers suspected of running an FTP-server with copyrighted music tracks. Being a mere access provider, the paragraphs in the Copyright Act that specify an information duty don't apply, the court writes. Those provisions only see to parties that are involved in the multiplication or distribution of pirated physical items. Moreover, the argument of complicity in the act doesn't apply either, the court states, because the ISP has no active role or obligation to monitor all traffic preventively. Finally, the music industry also fails in its appeal to general liability provisions for providers in the Tele Services Act (TDG). The obligation to remove and block information once its illegality or unlawfulness has been established does not imply an obligation to divulge information.
In fact the service provider argued that it was difficult to trace the individual user, since the FTP-server was operated via dynamic DNS with dynamic IP-addresses distributed by the ISP. The accusation focussed on the unlawful upload of two different songs from 1 album from the German group Rammstein. The German record company provided the ISP with 36 dynamic IP-addresses.
The Hamburg court follows a similar decision from the Higher Regional Court of Main from 25 February 2005, also about an FTP-server.
The e-zine Heise reports that this latter legislation is about to change. Under the draft new Telemedia Act service providers would be "entitled to provide information regarding personal data to authorised agencies and persons." Legal experts fear that this provision is so vague that in practice it will be interpreted as an obligation to hand over personal data.
Report in Heise (in English, 17.05.2005) http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/59602
Ruling of the Hanseatisches Obergericht 5 U 156/04 (28.04.2005) http://www.jurpc.de/rechtspr/20050062.htm
Ruling of the Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt am Main 11 U 51/04 (25.01.2005) http://www.aufrecht.de/3792.html
In a press conference held on 26 May 2005 in Paris, 6 organisations have launched a campaign against the French project of mandatory biometric ID card. The French Human Rights League (LDH), the union of magistrates, the union of French barristers, EDRI-member IRIS, DELIS (a coalition of more than 60 French NGOs and trade unions for the defence of privacy and personal data protection) and the French Association of Democrat Lawyers have published a joint position statement and have started a petition demanding the withdrawal of the project of the French Ministry of the Interior to introduce a mandatory biometric ID card (see EDRI-gram Number 3.8).
The ministry aims to provide the whole population by 2007 with an ID card with a contactless chip containing not only the civil status of the citizen but also two biometric identifiers: photograph and fingerprints. These data would be filed in centralised databases. The card will be mandatory and would also include the address of the holder. According to historians of the French identity system, the combination of these last two features was last used in the dark times of the Vichy regime. After the liberation the civil status information of French citizens was never centrally stored until 1987, but even since then, the change of address should not be mandatorily reported to the administration, in addition to the fact that the ID card itself is not mandatory.
"The project's objective is to build a nation-wide centralised police file containing biometric data of all citizens, which may be read even without their knowledge", the 6 organisations told the press. "The government recognises that the ultimate goal of the project is to set up a universal card which integrates the identity, the benefit of social rights and the ability to make private transactions; the idea is to make the individual totally transparent to both public authorities and commercial actors", they added. Moreover, the 6 organisations question the motivations of the French government, specially with regards to the fight against terrorism. They also insist on the fact that the French government has been unable to provide any statistics regarding identity fraud.
One of the main arguments of the French government is that mandatory biometric ID card are required by ICAO international standards and specially by the EU Council of ministers decision of 13 December 2004. However, as argued by EDRI-member IRIS during the press conference, these requirements only concern passports and travel documents. The EU decision explicitly mentions that national ID cards do not fall under the decision scope. Moreover, this decision has been made in the framework of Schengen agreements, which means that it does not apply to all EU countries. In addition, ICAO standards require only one biometric identifier (photograph), and, while the EU decision also makes fingerprints mandatory, this addition has been decided (following French demand, according to some) behind closed doors, thus avoiding re-examination of the text by the Europarl LIBE Committee. Thanks to the EU Parliament and to the Article 29 group of EU Data Protection authorities, a central database of biometric identifiers has however at least been avoided at the EU decision level.
Will the French member of the Article 29 group, the 'Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés' (CNIL), try to obtain such a limitation at the national level? According to François Gicquel, the CNIL Commissioner in charge of the dossier, "the CNIL has always had reservations on the constitution of central biometric databases". A first version of the draft law dated as early as mid-March 2005 was obtained by the 6 organisations and distributed to the press. However, by mid-May, the CNIL was still not officially asked by the French government for its consultative opinion. According to some, the CNIL has finally received a revised draft of the law shortly before the press conference.
On 1 June 2005, Air France has started a campaign of voluntary biometric (fingerprint) identification at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris (terminal 2F), in co-operation with the borders police. This experiment was approved by the CNIL, even though it implies the constitution of a centralised database, "because the program is voluntary". This program, called 'Pegasus', allows for quicker and easier border control for travellers who register to the program. These travellers may be EU or Swiss citizens. One of the fears of the 6 organisations that denounce the mandatory biometric ID card project is that the use of biometrics becomes commonplace for daily activities. This new experiment shows that the danger is already there.
Joint position statement and petition 6 organisations (26.05.05, in French)
http://www.ldh-france.org/actu_derniereheure.cfm?idactu=1059
Coverage of the press conference (27-28.05.05, in French)
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-654810,0.html
http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=299443
CNIL file on biometric ID cards project (in French)
http://www.cnil.fr/index.php?id=1773
IRIS Inputs on the French biometric ID card project (13.04.05, in English)
http://www.iris.sgdg.org/actions/ines/Marzouki-CFP05.pdf
ZDNet France article on Air France 'Pegasus' program (27.05.05, in French)
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/informatique/0,39040745,39227170,00.htm
EDRI-gram 3.8, French minister demands compulsory biometric ID card (20.04.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.8/ID
(Contribution by Meryem Marzouki, EDRI-member IRIS)
The not for profit association FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure) is assembling all forces for a climax in the battle against the patentability of software programs. On 6 July 2005 the European Parliament will vote in plenary on the proposed directive on computer-implemented inventions. It is the second reading. In the first reading Parliament rejected the Commission proposal with a large majority, but that protest was largely ignored by the ministers of competitiveness from the member states. In the second reading an absolute majority of all MEPs is required to reject or amend the proposal, i.e. 367 votes, irrespective of absences or abstentions. In order to make sure enough MEPs are present, FFII is calling on all supporters to contact their national Europarl representatives.
First the commission on legal affairs (JURI) will vote on 20/21 June 2005. In a great collaborative effort FFII has build a file with all the amendments tabled on the proposal prepared by rapporteur Michel Rocard, with extensive voting advice.
On 1 June 2005 FFII organised a conference in Brussels with the CCIA (Computer and Communications Industry Association) and 4 MEPs. This morning two other hearings were organised by the Europarl itself. One hearing was organised by the Greens together with FSF Europe with keynote speaker Richard Stallman and another by the EPP-ED group with Theodora Karamanli from the European Patent Office and many representatives from both SMEs and multinational companies. Finally, this evening demonstrations will take place in Brussels, Vienna and Helsinki.
According to FFII notes on the conference there was an interesting debate with Mark MacGann, the executive director of EICTA, about the validity of the 'economic majority' presented by FFII against software patents. This open list is now signed by 544 companies, representing an annual turnover of almost 1.5 billion euro. EICTA (European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Association) represents 32 national ICT/CE associations from 24 European countries and fully supports the Council position. MacGann explained that software patents were sufficiently excluded. Immediately a representative from SUN stood up and said EICTA could not speak on behalf of their company on software patents. Similarly, a representative from ISOC Poland said the Polish IT association had equally rejected the position of EICTA.
The German e-zine Heise was present at the conference and reports that the Council is already setting up trilogue meetings to reach a common position, independent of the outcome of the EP plenary vote, to prevent any official conciliation procedure. If Council, Commission and European Parliament reach such an informal agreement, the directive can immediately enter into force after the EP vote.
Softwarepatente: EU-Rat will kurzen Prozess bei der Richtlinie machen (02.06.2005)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/60169
FFII notes on the 1 June conference (01.06.2005)
http://wiki.ffii.org/Konf050601En
FFII analysis and voting recommendations per article (ongoing)
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/europarl0309/amends05/juri0504/amendment-...
Sign-up campaign economic majority
http://www.economic-majority.com/
On 27 May 2005 the first Big Brother Award Ceremony in Italy, organised by the NGO Winston Smith Project, lead to an extremely unlikely winner. The Award for Lifetime Menace was given to Giuseppe Fortunato, appointed 2 months ago as new member of the Data Protection Authority. According to the jury, Fortunato is one of the very few Italians convicted with a final sentence (the case went all the way to the highest court) for grave offences against privacy. As legal council of the municipality of Naples Fortunato demanded the traffic data of the mobile phones of the Mayor and 5 members of the council. He organised a press conference about the results of his investigation and claimed the phones were used to make private calls. Fortunato obtained the traffic data from mobile operator SIP by claiming the request was authorised by the chair of a special municipal commission on transparency. In fact, in conspiracy with an employee of SIP, he anti-dated his letter a few months, to make it look as if the previous chair of the commission had approved. But even if that fraudulent act had not occurred, the Italian highest court notes separately, the commission didn't have the authority to demand such sensitive data anyway. The jury assigned the prize in consideration of the lack of explanations and for the silence of Fortunato on the topic.
By popular vote, Telecom Italia was awarded the first 'Complaint of the People' Award. According to a report in the excellent Italian e-zine Punto Informatico the national telephone company just beat Silvio Berlusconi, Microsoft and the ex-minister of Culture Giuliano Urbani. A very sportive Telecom Italia person collected the negative prize presented during e-privacy 2005 conference in Florence.
Silvio Berlusconi didn't escape a Big Brother Award though; the jury awarded him with the special 'Boot in the mouth' award for sending an SMS to every Italian mobile phone with a call to vote for the European elections. "Thus he violated the privacy of about 40 million Italians, even to people that weren't allowed to vote. Following this unprecedented action, the police sent multiple messages during the days of the funeral of the Pope," writes the jury.
The worst public service award was shared by the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Education. In order to obtain a new electronic ID-card every Italian is now fingerprinted. An unverifiable but trustworthy deep throat said that fingerprints data are centrally filed at the Ministry of Home Affairs. This fact violates the present law stating that biometric data should only be voluntarily included in the ID-card, and that templates only, and not full fingerprints, must be used. The Ministry of Culture on the other hand has also gone to great lengths to obtain a Big Brother Award, by requiring all kinds of irrelevant personal data from pupils when they take mandatory tests in the second and fourth year of elementary school. These data are processed by unknown external companies, without any specific authority to deal with these data.
Finally, a positive Emmanuel Goldstein award was presented to Stefano Rodotà , "for having been more than just chair of the Italian privacy authority, but the heart and soul of privacy in Italy too."
Assegnati i Big Brother Awards Italia (30.05.2005)
http://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=53111&r=PI
Italian BBA website
https://bba.winstonsmith.info/
Penal conviction new Italian DPA member in cassation verdict nr 9331 (08.03.2002)
http://www.lexfor.it/lexfor/2002-10/2002-10-Pen-Giu-1683.asp
Experts from the London School of Economics have calculated the true cost of the planned ID card in the UK and conclude it will be be three times as high as the government estimates. Introducing the card will cost over 18 billion pounds (26,6 billion euro), or 435 euro per inhabitant of the UK in stead of the estimated 93 pounds (almost 138 euro).
The LSE report mentions 3 issues seriously under-calculated by the Treasury; the cost of each reader, the lifetime of a card and the processing of individual changes. In stead of 250-750 pound per reader, 3.000-4.000 pound is more likely. The researchers find the assumed 10-year life span of a card equally dubious. In order to remain reliable, biometric data such as fingerprints and facial images need to be re-scanned every five years. Finally, the researchers point at hidden costs of 1 to 4 billion pounds for human resources to process a high number of changes in the register.
On 25 May government reintroduced the hotly contested Identity Cards Bill to the House of Commons. The chip on the card will contain three identifiers: facial recognition, iris scanning and fingerprinting. According to Privacy International "the controversial Bill is almost identical to the legislation that fell before the general election. There is a total of 25 changes in the new Bill, many of which are cosmetic or superficial." On 30 May PI published a report on the dangers of social exclusion, based on analysis of the biometrics trial on 10.000 volunteers conducted by the UK Passport Service. They conclude: "More than four million disabled people will probably encounter significant problems when using the proposed combination of biometric techniques. Extrapolating from this research, more than a million disabled people will suffer grave and perhaps insurmountable problems accessing public services, while more than 60,000 disabled people will not be able to register their biometrics in any way with the proposed identity scheme."
Text of the proposed Identity Cards Bill (25.05.2005)
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmbills/009/2006009....
ID cards to cost £300 per person (29.05.2005)
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1494944,00.html
PI report, UK Identity Cards and Social Exclusion (30.05.2005)
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd³³0³=x-347-228833
The district court of Helsinki, Finland, has decided telecommunication company Sonera seriously violated telecommunication privacy between 1998 and 2001. On 27 May 2005 the court handed down suspended sentences to five employees for their unauthorised use of mobile telephone records. Sonera executives ordered a detailed examination of the telephone behaviour of employees, to find out who had been leaking information to the press. But on another occasion the security staff also voluntarily and without any legal basis provided traffic data to the National Bureau of Investigation, the Security Police and the Helsinki Police to help investigate the murder of a prostitute.
The Finnish newspaper Helsingi Sanomat reports: "The harshest sentence was handed down to former Information Security Manager Juha E. Miettinen, who got a ten-month suspended jail term. (....) The defendants claimed that digging up the information was part of a legal investigation into suspected wrongdoing. (....But) the court did not believe the claims of Miettinen, generally seen as the main defendant, who said that he had misunderstood the law. The court noted that Miettinen had written books on data protection, spoken at seminars in the field, and taken part at least to some extent in legislative work on the matter."
According to Sanomat the sentences were less severe than the prosecution had demanded. The defendants are expected to launch an appeal.
Five get suspended sentences in Sonera telephone record case (01.06.2005)
http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/english/article/1101979719153
EDRI-gram: Finnish security police charged with illegal snooping (02.12.2004)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number2.23/snooping
On 12 and 13 May 2005 the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) organised a successful conference in London to make progress on a draft international treaty on Access to Knowledge (A2K). It was the third meeting of a very diverse expert group of academics, educators, representatives of libraries, consumer organisations and people from the open source movement. During the conference all the detailed provisions laid out in each of the sections of the draft treaty were debated in separate sessions. Thanks to strong pressure from the chairs, urging speakers to be pointed in their assessments and short in their speech, the analysis was completed on time and recorded in every detail.
This global coalition took shape in September 2004, when TACD organised a session in Geneva to discuss reform of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). The meeting laid down a challenge to WIPO to reform rules relating to intellectual property (IP), such as copyright and patents. The joint goal is providing wider access to knowledge, especially for poorer consumers in developing countries and restoring a balance in IP-rules to uphold the traditional rights of users.
A second meeting in Geneva in February 2005 determined that it was necessary to develop a new treaty, or at least principles, to redress this imbalance as part of a 'development agenda'. Led by the Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech), an expert group began drafting the treaty.
At this third meeting around one hundred participants were present, about half academic or legal experts, and half representing consumer and user groups. A substantial minority came from developing countries, including Brazil, India, Kenya, Malaysia South Africa and Zimbabwe.
The next step will be to incorporate all the amendments, additions, omissions and other suggested changes to produce a new draft that will be circulated to meeting participants for final comments. When this has been completed, the draft can be presented to governments and promoted around the world, maybe even at the WIPO General Assembly in September 2005. Ultimately, it is hoped that the treaty, or at least the ideas that are driving it, will be adopted and ratified by WIPO, and incorporated into national laws and a modern way of looking at intellectual property.
Overview Access to Knowledge initiative and draft text
http://www.cptech.org/a2k/
EDRI-gram, Geneva meeting on access to knowledge (10.03.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.5/WIPO
(Contribution by Kaye Stearman, Consumers International)
In stead of getting information on European passengers headed for the United States fifteen minutes after take-off, the US now want the information one hour before the plane departs. Michael Chertoff, chief of the Department of Homeland Security announced this on 23 May 2005 during a visit to the European Policy Centre in Brussels.
Under the current passenger name record (PNR) agreement between the EU and the US, the US can pull the information directly from the European airlines reservation systems. A push system in which the airlines send the information themselves still needs to be implemented. Chertoff believes that passengers and airlines will be positive about the new demand, to prevent any further incidents with planes sent back to the EU.
The European Parliament has taken the European Commission to court over the agreement with the US on the transfer of air passenger's personal data (PNR). The Strasbourg Court is examining whether the Commission, when making the deal, exceeded its powers and acted in breach of EU Data Protection legislation. In an interview with EUPolitix.com EU Commissioner for Justice Frattini said he expects a decision by the Court in September.
During a debate on PNR data in the European Parliament on 9 March 2005 Frattini promised a review on the current PNR agreement between the EU and US within the first year after it came into force. Since the agreement was signed on 28 May 2005 and no review has been published yet, that promise has not been fulfilled. In EUPolitix.com Frattini says: "we are exploring at a technical level, a possible way for an agreed solution in view of reviewing PNR agreement". Frattini also announces that he wants to wait for a decision by the Court in September, delaying the review for several months.
On 19 May 2005, EU and US officials met during the Policy Dialogue on Border and Transport Security in Brussels. Issued discussed were biometric travel documents, document security, visa policy and passenger name records (PNR). The US want to introduce trusted traveller programs in which selected, pre-screened air passengers can travel freely between the EU and US using biometric identification. The first international pilot, based on iris scanning, will be introduced between the airports of Amsterdam and New York.
Chertoff wants advance air passenger data (24.05.2005)
http://www.euractiv.com/Article?tcmuri=tcm:29-139801-16&type=News
Chertoff seeks further air deal with EU (23.05.2005)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID...
EUPolitix.com: Interview with EU Commissioner for justice Frattini (31.05.2005)
http://www.eupolitix.com/EN/Interviews/200505/a7b5adcd-f68b-474a-b56d-...
EDRI-gram, Europarl debate on PNR and data retention (10.03.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.5/retention
EDRI-member ISOC Bulgaria has sent an angry letter in May 2005 to the US Trade Representative about grave errors in their recent Special 301 Report.
The Bulgarian organisation defends the Bulgarian government for its attempts to solve the problems with the illegal usage of software, music and films. In the 5-page letter, also sent to the US Ambassador to Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Ambassador to the USA and to the Bulgarian minister of culture, ISOC-Bulgaria protests against the use of fake data in the report. Allegedly these data were provided by the Business Software Alliance through their Bulgarian representative.
The letter comes as part of the continuous efforts of the Bulgarian Internet Society to ensure that all software companies are treated equally and fairly by the government, in stead of special, complimentary relations. The most recent result of these efforts is a statement by the Bulgarian Minister of State Administration. In May 2005 he announced that he will not renew the contract between the government and Microsoft. This contract was closed in 2002, but has been heavily criticised since, both nationally and internationally.
Under this contract, the government paid 450 US dollar per computer for the 3-year rent of MS WindowsXP and MS OfficeXP. At the same time the price for the same software for same time period, obtained via the Bulgarian IT association - a company of hardware assemblers - was 220 US dollar. And just a few months before signing the agreement, the government bought (not rented) 10.000 copies of MS Windows and Office for 1 million dollar (a mere 100 dollar per copy).
In an interview with the International Herald Tribune Veni Markovski, the chair of ISOC-Bulgaria, sums up the problems with this contract. The Bulgarian government spent 13.6 million US dollar on Microsoft's Windows XP products in 2002, paying twice the official list price for the software which was purchased through a Microsoft retailer. "A third contract, for $1.5 million, was for 35,000 software licenses for schools, but Markovski maintains that there are no more than 850 computers in schools that could run the software. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the contract was jointly issued by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and that it covers up to 15,000 computers for public schools, with the rest being used by universities and the Academy of Science."
After the letter from Markovski to the Chief Prosecution Office, the number of licenses the Ministry of Education and Science bought was reduced to 18.000.
IHT, Open-source software gets boost at UN (11.12.2003)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2003/12/11/dividea_ed3_.php
(Contribution by Dessi Pefeva, EDRI-member ISOC-Bulgaria)
On 17 May 2005 the highest court in France, the cour de Cassation, has destroyed an appeal verdict from November 2002 that allowed companies to search the computers of their employees for unwanted internet behaviour. At the very least, the employee must be warned before and be present if a search is conducted.
The medical supplies company Nycomed Amersham Medical System (later renamed Cathnet-Science) searched the computer of their employee after somebody had found erotic pictures in his drawer (in his absence). The highest court found the subsequent dismissal unacceptable and has referred the case back to the appeal court of Versailles, to decide on the fate of the employee and a possible reimbursement for damages.
It is the second time the French cour de Cassation upholds the privacy of employees. In an earlier case an employee of Nikon was dismissed after having used his workfloor computer for private activities. On 2 October 2001 the French cour de Cassation destroyed the decision validating this dismissal as well, similarly basing their condemnation of the computer search on article 8 of the ECHR, article 9 of the French Civil Code and articles 120-122 of the Working Code.
La justice rappelle le droit à la vie privée du salarié en entreprise (27.05.2005)
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/050527/44/4fryy.html
Cour de Cassation, Mr K. vs. Sté Cathnet-Science (17.05.2005)
http://www.juritel.com/Ldj_html-1095.html
Cour de Cassation, Société Nikon France vs. Monsieur 0 (02.10.2001)
http://www.foruminternet.org/documents/jurisprudence/lire.phtml?id=171
6-11 June 2005, Benevento (Naples), Italy
Digital Communities 2005
http://www.ssc.msu.edu/~espace/DC2005.html
13 June 2005, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
European Commission Information day on the first call for proposals of the Safer Internet plus programme. Subject to the completion of all the necessary procedures, it is intended to launch a call in June 2005 with a deadline for proposals in October 2005
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/sip/news_events/in...
14 June 2005, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Plenary session of the Safer Internet Forum focussed on child safety and mobile phones
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/sip/news_events/mo...
16-18 June 2005, Paris, France
Academic conference 'Critical Approaches to Security in Europe', organised by the European Centre at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques
http://www.portedeurope.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=531
17-18 June 2005, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
3d Amsterdam Internet Conference organised by OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media
http://www.osce.org/fom/item_6_9759.html
22-25 June 2005, Karlsruhe, Germany
The biggest fair and conference on free software, linux and open source
in Europe, the LinuxTag
http://www.linuxtag.org/2005/de/home.html
23 June 2005, London, UK
15th edition of the UK Big Brother Awards
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd³³0³=x-347-209836
28-29 June 2005, London, UK
Annual Conference on New Directions in Copyright, organised by Birkbeck, University of London, UK
http://www.copyright.bbk.ac.uk/contents/conferences/2005conf.shtml
30 June - 1 July 2005, Geneva, Switzerland
International Symposium on Intellectual Property (IP) Education and Research, organised by WIPO
http://www.wipo.int/academy/en/meetings/iped_sym_05/
11-15 July 2005, Genova, Italy, OSS 2005
http://oss2005.case.unibz.it/index.html
28-31 July 2005, Den Bosch, The Netherlands
What The Hack, major open air hacker / internet lifestyle event
http://www.whatthehack.org/
8-9 September 2005, Brussels, Belgium
EuroSOCAP Workshop on confidentiality and privacy in healthcare
3 year programme to develop new ethical standards for privacy and patient access to (electronical) files, started on 31 January 2003
http://www.eurosocap.org