The Ministers at the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council, following an agreement reached by the Council on 1 and 2 December 2005, adopted the Data Retention Directive on 21 February 2006.
The Directive was adopted by the European Parliament on 14 December 2006 after the Council threatened to push for its own much tougher draft, as a framework decision, if the MEPs were unable to agree on the compromise for a directive.
The Irish and Slovakian representatives in the Council voted against the Directive, considering that more stringent measures were necessary. They argued the Council should have pushed for a framework decision, instead of negotiating with the Parliament over a directive. However, the majority disagreed with this opinion and therefore the Directive was adopted. The Irish Government said they were considering taking the matter to the European Court of Justice.
At the last minute, the Dutch parliament tried to prevent agreement on the Directive. The Lower Chamber of the Dutch Parliament adopted a motion on 20 February 2005 stating that the directive "does not comply to the conditions of a maximum retention period of 1 year, of an adequate arrangement for access to the stored data and to a compensation arrangement that suffices for a level playing field" and therefore "requests that the Government, during the JHA Council of 21 February 2006, does not agree to this Directive and makes a serious effort to start meaningful deliberations about the conditions." However, Minister Donner of Justice ignored this motion and did not object in the JHA Council.
At the same time, Finland plans to use the maximum time delay before introducing internet data retention.
Data Retention Directive endorsed by Ministers (23.02.2006)
http://www.out-law.com/page-6666
Text of the Data Retention Directive adopted by the JHA Council (21.02.2006)
http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/05/st03/st03677.en05.pdf
Lower House: Donner may not agree to data retention (onli in Dutch,
21.02.2006)
http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/39886/bewaarplicht
Minutes of the parliamentary debate (only in Dutch, 21.02.2006)
http://www.tweedekamer.nl/images/TK051-0506_tcm71-93693.doc
Finland: Internet data retention to start in 2009? ( 27.02.2006)
http://e.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=48305
EDRI-gram : Final push for single EP vote on data retention (5.12.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.24/EPvote
A first session of the Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO Development Agenda took place on 20-24 February 2006 in Geneva to discuss about proposals for a development agenda.
EDRI was present during the meeting in its new role as officially acknowledged observer. The WIPO Development Agenda is a far-reaching proposal that was initiated by the governments of Argentina and Brazil and adopted by the General Assembly in October 2004. The Development Agenda calls for fundamental changes to address the special concerns of developing countries, but also in general to give more weight to public and consumer interests.
The meeting had a slow start as Member States spent Monday morning negotiating the appointment of the Chairperson. Discussions followed on substantive issues contained in the proposals over the next days and NGOs were given the opportunity to intervene after each round of discussions.
Four proposals were discussed from : - Chile, advocating greater protection of information in the public domain; - Colombia to allow the national offices of developing countries to access databases for patent searches; - Friends of Development (FoD), a group of 15 developing countries, stressesing the need for the a more structured meeting that will allow the provisional committee to come up with concrete and practical results by the end of its second session. - United States on Internet-based tools to facilitate development.
Volker Grassmuck, representing EDRI at this WIPO meeting, commented on the US proposal by questioning the commercial viability of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM):
"Two days ago during the informal lunchtime session, we heard from a representative of IFPI that the online music market is finally taking off. Where this is true, it not related to DRM at all. The largest online music provider, Apple's iTunes Music Store, allows users to write standard Red Book audio CDs which then can be converted into formats such as "ogg vorbis" or "MP3" with standard tools. Apple's CEO Steve Jobs has made public statements that his company has studied DRM closely and came to the conclusion that DRM does not work. Therefore Apple iTunes is instead using something that has been termed "Digital Inconvenience Management".
The second largest service, eMusic.com with more than 1 million titles from 3,800 independent record labels around the globe selling more than 3.5 million songs per month, is not using any protection technology at all, but is selling clean, unencumbered high-quality MP3s - which did not prevent but rather enabled them to become number two in a difficult marketplace."
Mr Grassmuck also emphasised the potential of commons-based peer production: "On the other hand, large-scale highly distributed collaboration is one of the impressively proven strengths of the Internet. What has been termed "commons-based peer production" has unleashed a tremendous wealth of creativity in science, software, encyclopaedias, textbooks, music and many other areas. These knowledge resources are freely accessible to people in the developing and the developed world alike. The necessary prerequisite for this collaboration is that the rights to these jointly produced works are held in common. Without licenses like the GNU GPL and Creative Commons each participant would have to get permission from every other co-participant, meaning that such collaborative projects would simply not exist. From the US's perspective that only strong IPRs and their enforcement are safeguarding creative production, this seems counter-intuitive. But since the sustained effect of free and open collaboration is undeniable, the problem is not with the facts but with the intuition."
Subsequent discussions are scheduled for 26-30 June 2006, in preparation of the General Assembly in September 2006. The Provisional Committee is mandated to provide recommendations on a development agenda for the General Assembly.
WIPO - Meeting documents (24.02.2006)
http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=9643
European Digital Rights Statement on the U.S. Proposal to the PCDA
(23.02.2006)
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/a2k/2006-February/000979.html
IP Justice - WIPO Development Agenda - Documents submitted by NGOs
http://www.ipjustice.org/WIPO/WIPO_DA.shtml
Country proposals, NGO statements, blog and news articles on the WIPO
Development Agenda
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/pcda/
EDRI-gram : EDRI statement at WIPO Development Agenda meeting (IIM)
(20.04.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.8/DRM
On 16 and 17 February 2006, consultations were held in Geneva to organise the Internet Governance Forum, a result of deliberations during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to include a wider group of stakeholders.
These consultations were held in a genuinely open and inclusive spirit, with about 300 participants representing a large variety of stakeholder groups, including some who would not have been accepted under the stricter accreditation rules that were applied for WSIS.
The consultations were led by Mr. Nitin Desai, the Secretary-General's Special Adviser for WSIS, who explained that he intended to listen to the various views about the Internet Governance Forum and then faithfully report to the Secretary-General about the points of general agreement, and that he would describe the range of opinions on issues where no consensus exists.
There was wide agreement on the general principle that the Internet Governance Forum should be very open and inclusive to all kinds of stakeholder groups, and also that the management structure for the forum should allow all kinds of stakeholders to contribute as equals in the decision-making processes. A variety of ideas on how this could be organized would be reached.
An important question was how many days the Internet Governance Forum should last. Although initially there appeared to be a consensus on "two to three days", when Chairman Desai proposed it several interventions called for a longer duration.
However if the IGF is scheduled to last for a long time, the leading technical experts whose presence is important for the success of the IGF are much less likely to come.
There was a lot of discussion on possible topics for the Internet Governance Forum, and all stakeholders have been invited to submit in writing their top three choices for public policy issues to be discussed at the first meeting of the IGF, together with a short explanation on the reasons for these choices, by 31 March 2006.
Also public comments are open until 28 February 2006 regarding the need for a multistakeholder group to assist the Secretary-General in convening the IGF, what the mandate of this group should be and how it should be formed.
The website for the Internet Governance Forum now includes transcripts of the consultations in Geneva and a summary of the positions which were stated.
Internet Governance Forum website
http://intgovforum.org/
EDRi-gram: First Consultations on Establishment of Internet Governance Forum
(18.01.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.1/igf
(Contribution by Norbert Bollow - Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure)
On 21-22 February the Danish network on WSIS and the WFUNA Task Force on WSIS hosted the international conference "Where to go from Tunis" in Copenhagen. The conference was aimed at following up on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which concluded on 18 November 2005 with an agreement among world leaders on ambitious objectives and promises for the future Information Society.
The Copenhagen meeting specifically focused on evaluating the results of the WSIS process, and assessing the impact that the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society will have on global development in general, and more specifically on the future of the Information Society, particularly from a civil society perspective.
The conference presented keynote speeches and workshops on four concrete issues and approaches: - National ICT strategies - Local access to ICT - Human Rights and ICT - International follow-up mechanisms to the WSIS process - with special focus on the Internet Governance Forum and the ECOSOC Commission on Science and Technology
The debate and workshops resulted in an extensive list of recommendations drafted by each workshop. The recommendations include the following: - All countries should create a national ICT strategy consistent with the WSIS Declaration and Action plan; - Partnerships between private sector, civil society, local government, academia, libraries and research organizations should be promoted at all levels to provide local access and content; - Spectrum should be considered a public good; - Appointing a UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy; - Establishing a Global Privacy Forum with the mandate to work towards legally binding privacy regulation at global level; - Internet Governance mechanisms should be tested for human rights compliance, e.g. through a study initiated by the Internet Governance Forum; - The Internet Governance Forum should allow for the bottom-up creation of working groups on any relevant topic of interest to participants.
Full list of Recommendations of the Conference "Where to go from Tunis?"
(22.02.2006)
http://www.una.dk/wsis/act_dan.htm
Contributions to the Conference "Where to go from Tunis?" (21.02.2006)
http://www.una.dk/wsis/Konference_2006/Contributions.htm
(Contribution by Rikke Frank Joergensen, EDRI-member- Digital Rights Denmark and Jane Johnsen- FN-forbundet/Danish UN Association)
The Italian parliament has caused controversy by two new legislative acts. A newly adopted law against child abuse gives overly broad powers to the police, while a proposed new law on the protection of intellectual property gives too much leeway to organisations for collective rights management.
On 23 January 2006 the Italian Parliament approved a modification of Law 269/1998, in order to fight child pornography, The modified provisions give a very broad power to the police. The text of the act includes a series of vague terms and descriptions which may lead to subjective interpretation.
Art.14bis of the law introduces the National Centre that should check "incriminated" sites and individuals.
Under the law, the internet providers become investigators who are obliged to control and announce to the National Centre any company or individual who deals with pedo-pornographic material. They also have a series of obligations such as providing filters established by the Ministry of Communications and by the Internet provider associations. There is a heavy fine in case of non-compliance.
Another law discussed in Parliament is a decree based on EU Directive 2004/48 on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. The decree includes several vague and distorted definitions and its main objective appears to be that of obliging the ISPs to reveal the names of their customers, in order to avoid paying penalties.
In the current text, the term "intermediary" is so vague that an ISP could be considered as acting unlawfully for transmitting certain contents from his users through his network just like an express carrier could be considered guilty for transporting counterfeit merchandise.
The proposed new law does not provide for any damages for people unrightfully litigated by copyright owners.
Further information will be presented in the EDRi-gram following the evolution of the legislative acts.
A very bad law made worse (in Italian, 13.02.2006)
http://www.alcei.org/index.php/archives/108
The implementation of Directive 2004/48. Enormous increase of the powers of
audio-visual big players (In Italian, 17.02.2006)
http://www.alcei.org/index.php/archives/112
According to declarations of Romanian public officials, during the last month, the total costs of the specialized police services for legal wiretapping in 2005 was at least 118 million euros, an amount very close to the annual national budget for scientific research.
As Catalin Harnagea, former director of a Romanian Secret Service unit, declared the cost for wiretapping one telephone line is around 150 - 200 euros/ hour. This amount includes all the interception and transcription costs. Also according to President Traian Basescu around 6,370 telephones were wiretapped in 2005. Some figures given by the human rights organisation Helsinki Committee (APADOR-CH) show that, in 2002, a telephone line was wiretapped for an average of 220 days. Journalists from the newspaper "Adevarul" estimated every intercept generated about 30 minutes of recorded conversations per day. If the average per day would climb to 60 minutes, the total government spending on wiretaps would even double, to an amount higher than the annual budget for a ministry in Romania. Just to give some examples, in 2005, the Romanian Ministry of Culture had a budget of around 235 million euros, the budget for scientific research was around 132 million euros and the budget for house building was about 147 million euros.
In 2003, General prosecutor Ilie Botos declared that during the period 1991 - 2003 the conversations of more than 20,000 persons were intercepted with a judicial order. Another 14,000 interception mandates were issued between 1991 and 2002 at the request of national security bodies. Out of the 5,500 watched persons, only 620 were sent to court and just 238 were condemned.
In Italy Minister of Justice Roberto Castelli estimated there were 100.000 wiretaps in 2004, costing the Justice department aprox 300.00 million euro in cost reimbursements. On a population of aprox 58 million inhabitants, this made Italy wiretapping champion of the western world with 172 judicial intercepts per 100.000 inhabitants. According to unofficial estimates the Netherlands intercepted 12.000 phones (fixed and mobile) in 2004. If those numbers are correct, the Netherlands have 75 judicial intercepts per 100.000 inhabitants. The UK Communication Commissioner mentions a total of 1.983 warrants for intercepts in 2003 on a population of 59,5 million, totalling 3,3 intercepts per 100.000 inhabitants.
The discussion around the costs and reasons of wiretapping is a main topic also in the trial of the Romanian businessman Dinu Patriciu, owner of Rompetrol, that has complained about the wiretapping done by the Romanian Secret Service (SRI) for many years, even before a formal investigation was opened.
Last week the Parliament Commission that supervises the SRI activities has opened a supervision procedure to inspect the SRI wiretapping centres, after public concern about illegal interceptions.
SRI (Romanian Intelligence Service)'s "Tympan" costs as much as the Culture
Budget (in Romanian, 15.02.2006)
http://www.adevarulonline.ro/arhiva/2006/Februarie/1343/174646.html
Wiretapping warrants - state secrets (in Romanian, 16.02.2006)
http://www.ziua.ro/display.php?id=193913&data=2006-02-16
SRI Commission verifies wiretapping centres (in Romanian, 24.02.2006)
http://www.ziua.ro/display.php?id=194466&data=2006-02-24
EDRI-gram, Italian GSM provider warns: too many wiretaps (24.02.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.4/wiretap
Slovenia is joining the list of Visa Waiver Program countries whose citizens will be able to acquire new biometric passports before October 2006, as required by the United States. Currently there are 27 countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program, including Slovenia, whose citizens can enter the territory of the United States without Visa.
The selection process of the manufacturer of Slovenian biometric passports is best described as chaotic. The two manufacturers of the current non-biometric passports, Cetis and Mirage Holography Studio, immediately revealed their aspirations to produce a new passport when the government cancelled a contract for non-biometric passports in February 2005. They confirmed the existence of prototypes of biometric passports before the government even issued the first tender in March. A month later, a motion for a tender revision was filed by Prosum company. The National Revision Commission invalidated the tender and as a consequence, a new tender was issued in June that was published in Slovenian and European Official Gazettes. After Cetis won the tender, a motion for revision was filed again, this time by Prosum and Mirage. The Ministry of Interior overruled the motion and confirmed Cetis as a future manufacturer of Slovenian biometric passports, but the "losers" continued the procedure with the National Revision Commission which later in December 2005 ascertained that Cetis complied with the demands of the tender.
After that long lasting and exhausting saga of tenders and revisions, the Minister of Internal Affairs Dragutin Mate, the Minister of External Affairs dr. Dimitrij Rupel and director of Cetis, Ms. Simona Potocnik signed a cover contract for designing, manufacturing and personalizing Slovenian biometric passports. These passports should be available to Slovenian citizens at the beginning of September for the price of 25 Euro. Old, non-biometric passports will be valid until they expire, so there is no need to obtain a new passport unless travelling to the United States.
There has been virtually no public debate about the privacy issues with biometric passports. Although some journalists wrote about the possible risks of having biometric data stored on RFID chips in passports, it seems that the general public is not concerned. The issue of biometric passports was presented as "a requirement from Brussels and Washington" and the debate in the media was mainly focused on complications regarding tenders, leaving aside other important questions.
Biometric Passports - article and video clip from National TV news (in
Slovenian only, 15.02.2006)
http://www.rtvslo.si/modload.php?&c_mod=rnews&op=sections&...
EDRI-gram : No delay for EU biometric passports (6.04.2005)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.7/biometrics
(Contribution by Aljaz Marn, EDRI Observer - privacyblog.net, Slovenia )
During 6 January - 6 February 2006, e-belarus.org conducted a survey of Belarusian online media by selecting 10 very different websites of various types, as well as with different political attitudes. The selection was made on the basis of the average number of visitors per day.
The analysis of the 10 selected online news resources revealed that 58% of the total number of news is taken from national online and offline resources and 37% from foreign sources. 5% of the total number of news is presented without mentioning its sources. National press agencies cover 34% of the news, 38% news comes from foreign sources (out of which 27% from Russia), 8% of news is taken from each other and only 5% of the total number of news is original content.
The major sources for Belarusian online media are national press agencies Belapan and Belta, Russian lenta.ru, Interfax and Belarusian service of Radio Free Europe website.
In spite of the technological developments and the occurrence of new online tools, Belarusian online media seem to basically use traditional journalism techniques. The number and quality of Belarusian media online is at an early stage, most of them being news sites with very limited editorial news and some form of participatory communication.
The survey revealed that out of all the media in Belarus, only 6% have online presence.
Based on statistics and the users evaluation, the survey also showed some concern related to the accuracy and objectivity of the news presented on these websites.
The European Commission has recently announced the creation of a new EU-funded Belarus radiostation in an attempt to create a more pluralistic media landscape. They started broadcasting on 26 February 2006. The pre-election radio broadcasts will be aired on medium wave and streamed on the Internet. Broadcasts will also be available as podcasts.
Belarusian Mass Media Online (28.02.2006)
http://www.e-belarus.org/article/onlinemedia2006.html
Report on Belarusian Online Media Survey (28.02.2006)
http://www.e-belarus.org/docs/onlinemedia2006.pdf
Belarus: EU-Funded Broadcasts Set To Begin (24.02.2006)
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/2/F350FD6D-CA4C-4149-97D0-D3...
(Thanks to Mikhail Doroshevich - E-Belarus.ORG)
AN.ON, the German anonymiser service developed by the university of Dresden and the regional data protection authority of Schleswig Holstein, enabling its users to surf anonymously via a Java-webproxy has no more public funding this year. Although it will be possible for users to surf free via AN.ON, high performance services will be provided against cost.
During the last years the German service has struggled with some legal difficulties. In 2003, AN.ON project was forced by the Lower District Court in Frankfurt /Main to hand over the protocol data record showing the IP-address of visitors to specific websites, through a back door the developers were forced to create.
Within the new version, the payment will be made by common payment methods. The user's personal data, provided according to the payment method chosen, will be stored only when these data are necessary for the billing process and will be deleted afterwards.
The payment system will be finalised once it is publicly tested. The test is in progress and free of charge.
AN.ON - Payment Component Test
http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/PaymentTest_en.html
EDRI-gram no.17 : Police Raids German Anonymiser (10.10.2003)
http://archive.edri.org/cgi-bin/index?id=000100000109
Report on the International High Level Research Seminar on "TRUST IN THE
NET" Vienna, Austria, 9 February 2006
http://www.egov2006.gv.at/Reports/Report_Trust_in_the_Net_Vienna_09_FE...
Working Party 29 Opinion 2/2006 on privacy issues related to the provision
of email screening services
http://europa.eu.int/comm/justice_home/fsj/privacy/docs/wpdocs/2006/wp...
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
16 March 2006, Belfast, Northern Ireland
FOSS Means Business
http://foss-means-business.org/
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
15 April 2006, Deadline funding applications
Civil rights organisations and initiatives are invited to send funding
applications to the German foundation 'Bridge - Bürgerrechte in der
digitalen Gesellschaft'. A total of 15.000 euro is available for
applications that promote civil rights in the digitised society.
http://www.stiftung-bridge.de
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
30 April - 2 May 2006, Hamburg, Germany
LSPI Conference 2006
The First International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues in
IT
http://www.kierkegaard.co.uk/
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
Students may apply for funds to attend the workshop until 30 June 2006.
http://www.e-voting.cc/stories/1246056/