Starting with February 2006, part of EDRI-gram will be available in
Macedonian, a few days after the English edition. The translation is done by
the NGO Metamorphosis, which is also an EDRI-member. Some of the articles
from the previous EDRI-gram 4.2 are already available online at
http://www.metamorphosis.org.mk/index.php?option=com_content&task=...
Over a 100 phone numbers of Greek Government officials were illegally wiretapped for 11 months, during and after the 2004 Olympic games. This was confirmed on 2 February 2006 by three ministers during the daily Greek government press conference.
The illegal wiretaps were discovered in March 2005 during a routine control at Vodafone, one of the main mobile providers in Greece. Those under surveillance included the Prime Minister, many ministers, the police, army and intelligence heads and headquarters, along with left wing political activists, journalists, and lawyers. The system was deactivated by the mobile operator too soon to trace the perpetrators, yet their approximate location was interpreted by some in the media as being suspiciously close to the US embassy in Athens.
The events received world-wide coverage yet most news agencies failed to highlight the technology policy implications of the affair. The illegal wiretaps used the "lawful interception subsystems" present in most telecommunication equipment that security services and law enforcement to listen to a live copy of every call. The perpetrators managed to bypass the authorisation mechanisms by technical means or or, more likely, by using an insider, then installed software on the control computers of Vodafone that redirected the monitored calls to a group of "shadow" pre-paid mobile phones, from which the conversations could be listened to and recorded. Traffic data including the location of the handsets under surveillance may also have been collected.
These interception interfaces first came to light in 2001, when they were standardised by the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI). Many specialists predicted that "surveillance by design" would introduce a systemic vulnerability into the communication infrastructure that would in time be inevitably abused. The Greek case confirms this grim prediction, yet no word has been spoken about reversing this trend.
The matter is now being investigated by the Greek justice, but polls reveal that many people are pessimistic about ever finding the perpetrators and are distrustful of the overall state of mobile phone privacy. The government is wary of blaming Vodafone for the security breach. If the operator had not raised the alarm no one would have ever known about the illegal wiretapping, the minister of Interior admitted.
The independent authority whose job it is to preserve the confidentiality of communications learnt of the case at the same time the journalists were briefed, nearly a year after the discovery and the deactivation of the monitoring operation. So far the response of the government has been to look at strengthening the legal apparatus to protect citizens against illegal wiretapping, without considering any of the technical telecommunication security options. As a Greek journalist remarked during a press conference, the current, already modern and sophisticated, legal apparatus seems to have failed at each and every stage.
Some translations of the Greek ministers' press conferences with a focus
on technical details
http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~gdanezis/intercept.html
Some technical manuals of the Interception Management Systems and AXEs
from Ericsson (similar to the equipment used by Vodafone)
http://www.quintessenz.at/cgi-bin/index?id=000100003502
http://www.wedophones.com/EricssonManualsLead.htm
Greek Government Press Briefing (Greek only, 2.02.2006)
http://www.hri.org/news/greek/kyber/2006/06-02-02.kyber.html
Wiretaps of phones and ministers (Greek only, 2.02.2006)
http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/print_article.php?e=A&f=18454&m=N01&am...
Athens Olympics phone tapping revealed (3.02.2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1701218,00.html
The ETSI Interception Dossiers (27.03.2001)
http://cryptome.org/etsi-intercept.htm
ETSI Lawful Interception Summary
http://portal.etsi.org/li/Summary.asp
The masts betrayed the bugs (Greek only, 13.02.2006)
http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/print_article.php?e=A&f=18463&m=N08&am...
Press Release - Authority for the assurance of the confidentiality of
communications (ADAE) (Greek only, 6.02.2006)
http://www.adae.gr/adae/viewarticle.html?langid=el&articleid=73
(Contribution by Dr George Danezis from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
The European Commission has decided to open formal proceedings against the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) and its individual national members and has sent them a Statement of Objections, as a first step in antitrust investigations
The Commission objects to parts of the contracts closed amongst national authors and composers societies. Bilaterally the societies close agreements on internet, satellite and cable transmissions.
The Commission is concerned that the royalty collectors are trying, by various methods, to ensure that each of them maintain exclusive access to broadcast royalties in the countries they operate. This might infringe on the prohibition of restrictive business practices in the EC Treaty.
The occurrence of a network between the collecting societies by means of these interlocking agreements ensures the collective societies a monopoly on their domestic markets and prevent the new entrants from getting into the copyright management market.
The contracts also include membership restrictions obliging the authors to transfer their rights only to their own national collecting society as well as territorial restrictions obliging the commercial users to get a license only from the domestic collection society, limited to the domestic territory.
CISAC has two months to present its defence in writing.
The procedure looks like a logical follow-up to the decision in 2005 to create one European internet rights clearinghouse for internet content providers. The Commission concluded that the current territorial system "is a source of considerable inefficiency" and proposed a serious reform. Following these actions the Belgian and Dutch music copyright collecting societies, SABAM and BUMA, announced last year their intention to drop their claims of national exclusivity on the licensing of online rights.
Competition: Commission sends Statement of Objections to the International
Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) and its EEA
members (07.02.2006)
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/06/63
EC marks copyright monopoly's cards (09.02.2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/09/ec_probes_cisac/
EDRI -gram NL and BE collecting societies to drop national exclusivity
(24.08.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.17/onlinemusic
EDRI-gram: Music: commission wants 1 internet clearing house (14.07.2005)
http://www.edri.org/issues/copyright/collecting
The Czech authorities are currently in a debate with telecommunication companies over the exact amounts they will have to pay to reimburse the costs related to the new data retention legislation that came into force at the middle of the last year. The Czech republic already adopted data retention legislation in the middle of 2005, in anticipation of new EU legislation. It stipulates a maximum period of data retention for 12 months. An ordinance of the Czech telecommunication authority (CTÚ) established, in the middle of December 2005, the minimum retention period of 3-6 months for different types of data. The special CTÚ ordinance stipulates the price of each "service" of transmitting data from the operators to the Czech police and the other security agencies.
According to a report on the popular TV station Nova, the Czech police owed around 300 million Czech Crowns (approx. 10 million Euro) to the operators for their services related to tapping and transmitting telecommunication data for the for the last 6 months of 2005. In addition to that sum Pravo Daily reported that the counterintelligence service (BIS) owed the operators 18 million Czech Crowns (approx. 0.6 million Euro) for tapping the conversation during the same period. Spokesmen of the Czech police and BIS refused to present the exact amounts currently under discussion with the operators. "It is not only about payments for services but also reimbursements of necessary investments are discussed," said Jan Subert, spokesman of BIS. "BIS will probably pay some millions in the next few years for investments and the payments for services will not exceed hundreds of millions," predicted Subert. According to Jakub Hrabovský, spokesman of telephony operator Vodafone negotiations will be concluded by the end of March.
More information about this dispute (Czech only)
http://www.iure.org
Czech Telecommunication Office
http://www.ctu.cz/main.php?pageid=178
(Contribution by Filip Pospísil, EDRi-member Iuridicum Remedium - Czech Republic)
The 6th edition of the French Big Brother Awards taking place in Paris on 3 February has chosen the following in the 5 different award sections, for causing the most damage to personal privacy.
The Orwell Award for State official - the winner was Jean-Michel Charpin, Directeur de l'Insee (INES) for his participation in the INES project (Electronically Secured National Identity card). By this project he created a direct link to the Ministry of Interior Affairs ignoring the separation between population statistics and police administration. The card will include two biometric identifyers on a RFID chip.
The section for enterprises was won by Lidl (at close range to Carrefour) for having installed 65 video cameras for the surveillance of 60 employees in a store. The company has had similar policies in other countries as well.
The local Orwell Award went toArmand Deprez, the director of the Joliot-Curoe college of Carqueiranne. He enforced a rule to obtain fingerprints of all students. Fingerprints are necessary to enter the school canteen, thus enabling total surveillance of the students eating behaviour. This was necessary for "absolute transparency" as he said it.He also put the student grades online, for parents to control, and implemented an SMS system to inform the students they were late for classes.
The award of lifetime achievement was unanimously awarded to minister Nicolas Sarkozy for having created an environment of fear, for having weakened the justice's power while increasing that of the police, for having violated the information law and freedom with the spam for UMP, for having extended video-surveillance and cyber-surveillance and police access to administrative files with his third anti-terrorist law, for asking for the expel of people with no papers including minors, for having encouraged the fear of police forces.
The positive Voltaire award was won by Le Collectif National Unitaire de Resistance a la Delation (The National Unitary Team of Resistance to Denunciation) which had continued for their 3 year fight against the law on 'crime prevention' meant to be adopted next year which obliges educators and social workers to denounce families and individuals showing "a risk".
Press Release Big Brother Awards France (4.02.2006)
http://www.bigbrotherawards.eu.org/article.php3?id_article=582#winnerz
Roger Vleugels, an independent Netherlands-based legal consultant, published on 1 February, with the help of the Freedom of Information Advocates network, a very comprehensive overview of the situation of of freedom of information laws all over the world.
The document offers a complete image of the adoption of FOI laws in the world and is structured into 5 lists of countries.
A first list (A) covers the 68 countries where FOI laws has been approved or adopted and provides the formal adoption dates, the dates for entering into force as well as the name of the law. The countries are listed in chronological order of adoption, in alphabetical order as well as grouped on continents.
List B is a list of countries where FOI law is either not yet in power or is pending and list C is a list of countries where nothing has been done in this direction.
The last list (Z) is a list with countries where the author considers FOI laws is applied only in name. In the EU there are three countries still lacking formal access to information legislation: Cyprus, Luxemburg and Malta. Besides, the situation in some mini states is unclear: Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican.
The latest news regarding the application of of access to information in Europe stems from Germany, where a federal FOI law (Informations-freiheitsgesetz IFG) came into force on 1 January 2006 (previously there were in power FOI laws in 4 out of 16 German regions (Bundesländer)) and in Macedonia where a brand new FOI law will come into power June 2006.
Mr. Vleugels expressed his intention of updating the lists once or twice a year and welcomes any comments and corrections.
Overview of FOIA Countries Worldwide (1.02.2006) 'The Fringe'- monthly e-mail newslettter from the Dutch legal advisor FOI Roger Vleugels. For subscription send mail to roger.vleugels@planet.nl (subscriptions to The Fringe are free, but voluntary contributions are very welcome (24 euro per year for individuals).
EDRI-gram : Freedom of information in Germany and the UK (29.05.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.13/FOI
EDRI-gram : Freedom of Information Act in Macedonia (19.01.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.1/macedoniafoia
According to information published by the newspaper Les Echos a working document of the Ministry of Culture on the draft copyright law excludes the DVD from the private copy exception.
Representatives of the industry such as SEV (The Audio Edition Union) consider such an approach will only acknowledge a reality. As Jean-Yves Mirski, general delegate of SEV put it « for the DVD sold in the commerce equipped with anti-copying systems, the notion of the private copy (which is not a right but an exception) is not applied."
On the other hand consumers associations such as UFC-Que Choisir think the draft law also threatens the private copy of CDs and the legal downloading of files. Mr. Dourgnon from UFC Que Choisir says the new law will create confusion between the notion of the private copy and the exclusive copyright of an author. The consumer will keep on paying for the private copy when buying blank CDs and DVDs, while at the same time being restricted by DRM.
The debate follows a French court decision (in January 2006) protecting the right to be able to read CDs on any device, in spite of any copy protection. (See EDRI-gram 4.2)
This is not the first debate about the new draft copyright law that has raised a lot of controversies after the adoption by the French National Assembly of amendments that would legalise the exchange of music and video files on the Internet, as private copies.
In order to stop criticicism about not having consulted opponents to the draft law, the Minister of Culture will open a new debate website on 22 February 2006.
The Minister of Culture would like to forbid copying DVD (in French,
8.02.2006)
http://www.01net.com/editorial/304141/droit-d-auteur/le-ministere-de-l...
EDRI-gram : A CD should work on any device, says French court (2.02.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.2/privatecopy
DADVSI : one official site for debate (in French, 10.02.2006)
http://www.ratiatum.com/news2845_DADVSI_un_site_officiel_pour_debattre...
French Parliament is making the first step in legalising P2P (18.01.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.1/frenchp2p
New French debating website (after 22.02.2006)
http://www.lestelechargements.com
SlySoft, a company registered in Ireland, has released software that allows users to convert their own DVDs to formats they can watch on mobile phones, Playstation Portables, video iPods and similar devices.
This is one of the first examples seen in the wild of a "circumvention device" which bypasses the copy restriction technology contained in the DVD format - something that is illegal under the Irish law transposing the European Union Copyright Directive of 2001.
Those publishing DVDs now have the right to sue SlySoft for copyright infringement. Will they risk the bad publicity and possibility that Irish courts might set a precedent not to their liking?
SlySoft Software
http://www.slysoft.com/en/clonedvd-mobile.html
Guide to the EU Copyright Directive
http://www.fipr.org/copyright/guide/
Irish copyright law
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/ZZA28Y2000.html (s.370)
http://www.entemp.ie/publications/sis/2004/si16.pdf
(Contribution by EDRI board member Ian Brown)
In a public call to action released on 13 February 2006, Annette Muehlberg, European member of At-large Advisory Committee (ALAC) and co-chair network new media asked for public support in building up a regional structure to represent individual's interests and concerns.
The petition with the title "Help to strengthen Civil Rights and Consumer Protection in ICANN's policies! " considers that:
"The question of how Internet Governance is shaped is one of the central sociopolitical tasks of the coming years. It will be a matter of how consumers and Internet users can become involved in the policy making of ICANN.
There is, nevertheless, a civil society element in ICANN, the At-large Advisory Committee (ALAC), composed to represent Internet users, five regions in world each providing 3 representatives. At this point these representatives are chosen by a nominating committee of ICANN. However, the goal is that the current ALAC members build structures to foster participation in their respective regions, and furthermore facilitate the direct election of regional ALAC representatives.
This year, a European Regional At-Large Organisation (EU-RALO) will be build, to facilitate the broadest possible participation of European Internet users.
Current ICANN bylaws require organizational participants, who would like to build up a regional structure, to represent individual's interests and concerns. These organizations (or groups of people working on internet users' issues) are, in ICANN's terms, "At-Large Structures" (ALSes) and they form the so called "Regional At-Large Organisation" (RALO).
To reach the status of what ICANN refers to as an "At-Large Structure" (ALS), has a few simple requisites and a questionnaire to be filled.
There are already a few European organizations that have become ALSes, however, yet they are not representative for the diversity of European Internet oriented Human rights and consumer protection organizations.
With a Regional At-Large Organisation, we want to work issue oriented and influence ICANN's policies - with the profound knowledge of as many as possible European internet related consumer protection and civil rights organisations.
It would be helpful if you could use your individual and institutional contacts in north, south, west and east Europe to solicit for an inclusive civil society engagement and accrediting as At-large Structure."
The public call to action is open to signatures. It has already received support from several German EDRI-members.
Help to strengthen Civil Rights and Consumer Protection in ICANN's policies!
(13.02.2006)
http://www.wecann.de/2006/help-to-strengthen-civil-rights-and-consumer...
Wiki for discussion of the best possible structure of a European Regional
At-Large Organisation
http://www.wecann.net/ralowiki
Form to fill in order to get accredited to ALAC
http://alac.icann.org/correspondence/structures-app.htm
Form to fill in order to get accredited to ALAC (in Spanish and Italian)
http://alac.icann.org/framework.htm
(Thanks to Annette Muehlberg, EDRI-member Netzwerk Neue Medien - Germany)
Introduction to Openness and Access to Information
The Danish Human Rights Institute has launched in cooperation with a number
of national and international partners a new Handbook: Introduction to
Openness and Access to Information. The Handbook elaborates on four
different areas of access to information: the public administration,
Ombudsman and National Human Rights Institutions, the judiciary and NGOs.
The book is meant to serve as a basis for debate and dialogue and as
background material for training and education.
Introduction to Openness and Access to Information is available at
http://www.humanrights.dk/upload/application/a99e42a1/accesstoinformat...
As the current generation of the internet will "run out of space" because of
its lack of addresses, IPv6 -the sixth version of the Internet Protocol-
will succeed and provide a wide range of addresses and services. It will
underpin the convergence process between fixed and mobile, as well as
between data, voice and video. With IPv6, addresses can be assigned to a new
breed of internet-capable devices -mobile phones, car navigation systems,
home appliances, industrial equipment and much more. All of these devices
can be linked together, constantly communicating wirelessly. After intense
developments and investments, first IPv6 deployments are happening at
European and global level. The European Commission is engaging in a process
of identifying the hurdles and triggers for IPv6 deployment and ultimately
to define policies moving forward its wide adoption. As part of this
process, a consultation on IPv6 evolution is now launched (closing date : 24
February 2006).
http://europa.eu.int/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=ConsultationIPv...
15-17 February 2006, Málaga, Spain
Second Open Source World Conference
http://www.opensourceworldconference.com/malaga06/en/modules/wiwimod/
16-17 February 2006, Geneva, Switzerland
Consultation on convening Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
http://www.intgovforum.org/index.htm
20-24 February 2006, Geneva, Switzerland
Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO Development Agenda:
First Session
http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=9643
21-22 February 2006, Copenhagen, Denmark
Where to go from Tunis? Implementation of and follow-up to the World Summit
on the Information Society and the role of Civil Society in this process
http://www.una.dk/wsis
1-3 March 2006, Geneva, Switzerland
WIPO - Open Forum on the draft Substantive Patent Law Treaty (SPLT)
http://www.wipo.int/meetings/2006/scp_of_ge_06/en/
9 March 2006, Hannover, Germany
The RFID Revolution
To address the RFID challenges, and to launch a wide-ranging public debate,
the European Commission is organising a high-level Conference within the
CeBIT Fair (9-15 March, Hanover, Germany).
http://www.cebit.de/34733?x=1
20-21 March 2006, Brussels, Belgium
The Politics and Ideology of Intellectual Property
The TACD conference will provide an opportunity to stand back from specific
legislative proposals and consider the broader intellectual and
philosophical aspects of the debate.
http://www.tacd.org/docs/?id=286
29-30 March 2006, Brussels, Belgium
European Spectrum Management Conference 2006
http://www.epsilonevents.com/pdf/SPECTRUM%20BROCHURE.pdf
27-28 April 2006, Washington, USA
IP Disputes of the Future - TACD
This conference will ask what will be the IP disputes in new fields of
technology, and how advances in biotechnology and information technologies
will change the nature of IP disputes.
http://www.tacd.org/docs/?id=287
2-5 May 2006, Washington, USA
CFP2006
The Sixteenth Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy
http://www.cfp2006.org
2-4 August 2006, Bregenz, Austria,
2nd International Workshop on Electronic Voting 2006
Co-organized by Council of Europe (CoE) ESF: European Science
Foundation (ESF) within the project TED: Towards Electronic Democracy
International Federation of Integrated Processing, Working Group 8.5
Information Systems in Public Administration, Vienna University of
Economics and Business Administration. The deadline for contributing
papers is set on 24 February 2006. Students may apply for funds to
attend the workshop until 30 June 2006.
http://www.e-voting.cc/stories/1246056/