This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Datenschutz als globale Herausforderung

With more than 100 on-site participants and almost 4000 remote attendees through the live webcast, the 2012 Public Voice Conference was, this year again, a full success. The 2012 edition was held on 22 October 2012 in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in conjunction with the 34th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners.

Civil society groups, privacy advocates, data protection and privacy officials, technology experts and other professionals from different countries and regions gathered to discuss “Privacy Rights as a Global Challenge”, including current hot topics such as: - international approaches to consumer privacy rights enforcement;
- preserving civic participation in public affairs through open government and citizen engagement;
- cross cultural views on privacy, freedom of expression and human rights on data collection, retention and use, where EDRi observer Gus Hosein and EDRi member Meryem Marzouki took part. Specific panels were also dedicated to identifying the next challenges for digital privacy protection, taking the global temperature on consumer and privacy protection and examining the relative merits and flaws of legislations versus self regulations.

As usual, The Public Voice Conference Program Committee took care of highlighting the regional situation taking into account the venue’s country, while assessing at the same time global developments. A specific panel, moderated by EDRi observer Cedric Laurant, on “Adoption and Implementation of Latin America's Consumer and Privacy Protection Laws” was dedicated to the former issue. The latter took the form of a panel, moderated by EDRi member Meryem Marzouki, which assessed the 2009 Madrid Civil Society Privacy Declaration on “Global Privacy Standards for a Global World” with regards to recent developments worldwide, namely the mechanisms currently under consideration by the European Union (with the new data protection framework proposal), the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (with the implementation of the APEC Privacy Framework), the Council of Europe (modernization of the CoE Convention 108), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (revision of the OECD Privacy Guidelines), and the United States as well (with the US White House plan for a Consumer privacy Bill of Rights).

The Public Voice Conference is a main project of The Public Voice Coalition, an international coalition of NGOs and civil society groups established by the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC) since 1996 to promote public participation in decisions concerning the future of the Internet. Numerous EDRi members and observers are part of this global coalition, of which EDRi itself is an active member.

Other EDRi members and observers also took part in the following event: the 34th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner.

Javier Ruiz Diaz from EDRi member Open Rights Group (UK) participated in the Open Data & Privacy panel, where he highlighted some of the problematic issues ORG has learned from UK experience on open data, criticising the widespread belief that anonymisation is the easy solution for open data and privacy. He also highlighted that anonymisation needs open peer review and responsible disclosure.

Bogdan Manolea from EDRi member ApTI (Romania) represented EDRi at the "Privacy and Piracy" panel where he focused on the challenges to privacy of Intellectual Property Enforcement measures and reminded that ACTA will not be the last attempt to privatise online enforcement in Europe. He also took the opportunity to highlight EDRi's work on the guide to the EU Date Protection Regulation available at Protectmydata.eu.

EDRi Observer Gus Hosein, took part in the panel focused on the privacy implications of biometric data. He underlined that these days the biometric technology is being used extensively in the developing world by governments and relief agencies, including in refugee camps and for voter registration purposes.

Next year, The Public Voice Conference will come to Europe, in conjunction with the 35th International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners conference, to be held on 24-27 September 2013 in Warsaw, Poland.

2012 Public Voice Conference (with webcast of the meeting) (22.10.2012)
http://thepublicvoice.org/events/uruguay12/

The 2012 Public Voice Conference “Storifyed”
http://storify.com/meryemmarzouki/tpv12-storifyed-the-public-voice-con...

"The Public Voice" - data protection is a civil right (Peter Schaar’s Blog)
http://www.bfdi.bund.de/EN/PublicRelations/SpeechesAndInterviews/blog/...

Privacy Officials, Advocates Attend Uruguay Public Voice Conference (EPIC Alert, 26.10.2012)
http://epic.org/alert/epic_alert_1920.html

2012 Public Voice Conference Resources and Documents
http://thepublicvoice.org/events/uruguay12/#resources

The 2009 Madrid Civil Society Privacy Declaration: “Global Privacy Standards for a Global World” (03.11.2009)
http://thepublicvoice.org/madrid-declaration/

34th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (23-24.10.2012)
http://www.privacyconference2012.org/

ORG: Response to the ICO consultation on the draft anonymisation code of practice (28.09.2012)
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ourwork/reports/response-to-the-ico-con...

Data Privacy Commissioners Discuss Ubiquitous Tracking (31.10.2012)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/10/31/data-privacy-commiss...

(Contribution by Meryem Marzouki, EDRi member IRIS - France)