On 29 August 2013, EDRi signed together with other international and national human rights and freedom of expression organisations (ARTICLE 19, Reporters Without Borders, Privacy International, Vrijschrift, Open Rights Group, INDEX, English PEN and Access Now) a petition to strongly urge the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to support the Resolution, Massive Eavesdropping in Europe, tabled on 31 July 2013 by 23 members of the PACE.

The Resolution calls on member states to regulate and effectively oversee the secret services and special procedures and to pass legislative provisions at the national level to protect whistleblowers. The resolution also calls upon the Secretary General to launch an inquiry under Article 52 of the European Convention on Human R

Civil society groups European Digital Rights (EDRi) and the Fundamental Rights European Experts Group (FREE) have demanded an end to lawless spying on individuals around the globe. At a meeting with the Chair of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee today, the two groups handed over a document containing detailed analysis of the current European and US legal frameworks. The document will be submitted to all relevant policy-making and governmental bodies.

In light of recent revelations, which have profoundly undermined trust in online communications tools, there is an urgent need for transparency, predictability and proportionality.

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Deutsch: Barrierefreier Zugang zum Netz: Wie lange müssen wir noch warten?

Access to the so-called Digital Society through the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is increasingly gaining importance in our everyday life. Access to the web, where these technologies usually converge, is already a fundamental right that everyone should enjoy, including persons with disabilities, who represent 15 % of the European population. Today, ICTs and the web are the gateway to public services, education, employment, leisure etc.

EDRi member Electronic Frontier Finland (Effi) has submitted on 8 July 2013, with support from Avoin Ministeriö, a citizens' legislative initiative, titled "Yes We Can - The law for safeguarding of freedom of expression and privacy internationally", to the Ministry of Justice. If the initiative collects 50 000 names (almost 1% of total population of Finland) within 6 months, the Finnish parliament is obliged to vote on the proposal.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: EDRi-Schreiben in Sachen 'Licences for Europe'

EDRi send today, 3 July 2013, the following letter to Commissioners Kroes, Vassiliou and Barnier regarding the Working Group 1 of "Licences for Europe" initiative:

We are very pleased to see that our constructive participation in the Working Group has been noticed and appreciated.

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Deutsch: Medienfreiheit und Pluralismus in Europa

At the beginning of the year, the European Commission's High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism published a report and presented several recommendations to protect and promote a free and pluralistic media in Europe.

In order to collect feedback on the report and recommendations, the European Commission launched a public consultation to which EDRi responded on 14 June (see link to full answer below).

In the previous EDRi-gram, we published an “ENDitorial” entitled “European Privacy Association – good, bad or simply misunderstood”. In that article, we made reference to the ICOMP organisation and its transparency.

Subsequent to the publication of that article, Burson-Marsteller asked for some clarifications to be made. The clarifications (copied verbatim from an e-mail to us) that were requested as follows:

a. ''"Contrary to what you indicate, ICOMP does not send emails to Members of the Parliament directly.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Die European Privacy Association – gut, böse oder einfa...

The European Privacy Association, after being caught out for failing to respect the rules of the European Transparency Register, has issued a defence of its actions. An article published by IDG News Service describes Google, Microsoft and Yahoo as the “secret backers” of the organisation.