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Deutsch: ENDitorial: EDRi-Workshop zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung auf dem CCC

<---Corrected on 15.01.2011 with the full names of all participants from EDRi members --->

Three EDRi members,Netzwerk Neue Medien (Ralf Bendrath), Bits of Freedom (Axel Arnbak) and Panoptykon Foundation (Katarzyna Szymielewicz), together with one observer Patrick Breyer from AK Vorrat, gave a talk on data retention and hosted a workshop for activists during the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) which is Europe's biggest meeting of the hacking communities and which takes place every year in Berlin. The 27th congress was held under the revealing title "We come in peace". During four days of meetings, hackers, journalists, activists and a few MEPs discussed the conflicts that threaten freedom in the digital world, the challenges we will face in 2011, technological discoveries made in 2010 and strategies for activism.

What we prepared for this occasion was an hour-long lecture presented along with a dynamic slide show. The presentation was composed of five parts: (i) explanation of how data retention came about and what problems we have with it; (ii) overview of key jurisprudence undermining the principle of blanket data retention; (iii) outcomes of the evaluation process and the state of affairs in the European Commission; (iv) cases of abuse from various Member States; and (v) strategies for further action against data retention.

Our primary goal was to show that the year 2011 will be crucial in the fight against blanket data retention and therefore we need to create a broad activist movement and gain more social support to make our voice heard. We explained how civil society could exert an influence on the decision makers in Brussels and MEPs and what time frames we faced. We stressed the need for an EU-wide shadow report to be drafted by March and published right before the official report by DG Home. Another point was that we needed to gather data on the use of retention data from various EU countries, translate it into clear and convincing messages for the media and prepare a consistent campaigning strategy.

These needs and initial concepts were elaborated during an informal discussion at our workshop, which was announced in the plenary. CCC gave us this opportunity to organise our own event on the second day meant as a discussion space and informal gathering for activists interested in the data retention campaign. We welcomed about 50 persons who discussed with us practical aspects of the campaign for nearly two hours. The energy was high and we felt that another AK Vorrat-type of mobilisation is possible. As a result of this meeting we decided to set up provisional discussion tools - a wiki and a mailing list - where the conversation may continues. Everybody is welcome to join. You can also do it by e-mailing: info at bof dot nl

Presentation slides (27.12.2010)
http://www.edri.org/files/edri@27c3.pdf

Video recording of the talk (27.12.2010)
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/415/1/lang,de/

Summary of the workshop (joint effort, in progress)
https://etherpad.foebud.org/dataretentionworkshop

Wiki - dedicated to discussion on the campaign name
https://etherpad.foebud.org/nameforcampaign

(Contribution by Katarzyna Szymielewicz - EDRi-member Panoptykon Foundation, Poland)