On Monday 21 October, the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties will decide on the future of privacy and data protection in Europe. The recent revelations surrounding government surveillance involving some of the Internet's biggest companies have highlighted the urgency of an update of Europe's privacy rules.

The Regulation will have a major impact on the digital environment for citizens, businesses and public bodies. "The choice is between clear, harmonised, predictable and enforceable rules that will benefit European citizens and businesses or unclear, unpredictable rules that will benefit nobody except data monopolies and lawyers," said Joe McNamee, EDRi's Executive Director.

Civil society groups are concerned that any weakening of the European data protection rules and principles will undermine the rights and freedoms of European citizens. The past months have shown how important it is to limit the collection of data to the minimum necessary, to ensure privacy by design and to safeguard the right of individuals to delete their data from online services. The European Parliament now has the responsibility to ensure that Europe gets strong data protection rules for a competitive and harmonised market.

The Regulation will only be as strong as its weakest link, so it is critical that no loopholes are created that would undermine our democratic rights.

Joint press release by:

Access
Raegan MacDonald +32 486 301 096
raegan@accessnow.org

Alternative Informatics Association - Turkey
Özgür Uckan + 90 1 216 418 0 417
bilgi@alternatifbilisim.org

Article 19
Thomas Hughes, Executive Director +44 (0) 20 7324 2510
communications@article19.org

Chaos Computer Club
Christian Horchert +49 151 46429622
fukami@ccc.de

Bits of Freedom
Tim Toornvliet : +31 6 18606472
tim.toornvliet@bof.nl

Digitalcourage e.V.
Dennis Romberg
+49 521 1639 1639
presse@digitalcourage.de

Digitale Gesellschaft
Markus Beckedahl +49 177 207503541
presse@digitalegesellschaft.de

European Digital Rights
Joe McNamee +32 2 2742570
press@edri.org

Electronic Frontier Finland
Ville Oksanen +358 40 5368583
effi@effi.org

Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR)
Ross Anderson +441223 334733
Ross.Anderson@cl.cam.ac.uk

Föreningen för Digitala Fri- och Rättigheter (DFRI)
Andreas Jonsson +46 733755980
andreas@dfri.se

Initiative für Netzfreiheit
Josef Irnberger josef.irnberger@netzfreiheit.org
+43 (0) 699 10 47 88 31

La Quadrature du Net
Jérémie Zimmermann +33 6 1 59 40 6 75
jz@laquadrature.net

Liga voor Mensenrechten vzw
Caroline de Geest +329 223 07 38
Caroline@mensenrechten.be

Open Rights Group
Jim Killock +44 784498127
jim.killock@openrightsgroup.org

Panoptykon Foundation
Katarzyna Szymielewicz +48 692 404 096
katarzyna.szymielewicz@panoptykon.org

Privacy International
Anna Fielder +44 20 7242 2836
anna@privacy.org

VIBE - Verein für Internet-Benutzer Österreichs
Andreas Krisch +43 1 480502511
andreas.krisch@vibe.at

Vrijschrift
Walter van Holst
walter.van.holst@xs4all.nl