A broad coalition of human rights organisations has announced they will organise a Citizens' Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, from 16 to 18 November 2005, to coincide with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Citizens groups, civil society organisations, national, regional and international institutions, government delegations and all other interested parties and individuals are invited to participate in the Citizen's Summit on the Information Society.

The CSIS program will consist of a series of panels and conferences addressing main WSIS issues from the public perspective. CSIS aims to first of all send a strong message of support and solidarity from the international civil society to the local civil society and citizens in Tunisia. Secondly, CSIS wants to offer a specific civil society perspective on the main issues debated at the WSIS. In the first phase, in Geneva in 2003, thanks also to constant pressure from civil society, the conference focussed on human rights and social justice as cornerstones of the Information Society.

The sixth edition of Swiss Big Brother Awards ceremony was held in Zurich's Rote Fabrik on 29 October 2005. The Swiss jury received 100 nominations in four categories: government, business, workplace and the special life-time achievement award. The financial services branch of Swiss Post, Postfinance, was awarded the business award for the illegal transfer of bank transaction data to the United States. The transfer became apparent after a Swiss man tried to transfer an amount in US dollars to a Cuban travel agency based in Switzerland. Both bank accounts were registered in Zurich. Although the man assumed the transfer was purely domestic it turned out that Postfinance uses its US partner Western Union for all transactions in US dollars. The man was notified that the US Department of the Treasury had confiscated his money because of the US embargo against Cuba. Postfinance advised him to send a protest to the US authorities in order to get his money back. So much for the Swiss bank secrecy.

The third Preparatory Committee (PrepCom-3) of the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) closed its doors Friday night 30 September 2005 after what ITU describes as "two weeks of day and night sessions that saw agreement on large sections of the Summit text, but ultimately disappointing progress on a raft of contentious issues."

A lot of international media attention was given to the debate about Internet governance between the EU and the US. After the Geneva phase of the WSIS, accommodating the claims from many delegations of the developing world for new management and oversight mechanisms, a multi-stakeholder Working Group on Internet Governance was set up. While the US remained firmly in support of the status quo, on 28 September the UK delegation, speaking on behalf of the European Union, tabled a radical proposal to create a new, multi-stakeholder forum to develop public policy. The proposal specifically addressed the need for international government involvement in the policies for allocation of IP addressing blocks and procedures for changing the root zone file to provide for insertion of new top-level domain names and changes of country-code top level domain name (ccTLDs) managers. With eight proposals now tabled, informal consultations – excluding the participation of civil society, will continue to be held from now until the prior-Summit meeting in Tunis.

A number of civil society groups present at the WSIS PrepCom in Geneva have written an open letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "Since we learned that the second phase of the Summit would take place in Tunisia, we have expressed serious concerns over the violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Tunisian authorities. Today, shortly before the holding of the Summit, we unfortunately must note that there has been no improvement and that we have recently even witnessed a serious deterioration of fundamental freedoms."

The letter sums up an impressive number of human rights infringements in Tunisia recently and asks the Secretary General to do everything in his power to make Tunisia respect international human rights standards.

The letter is signed by over a 100 civil society organisations, including many EDRI members. The letter states:

On 12 and 13 September the Council of Europe convened a Pan-European Forum on "Human Rights in the Information Society: Responsible Behaviour by Key Actors" with representatives from state, industry and civil society.

The Forum was a follow-up to the recent Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on Human Rights and the Rule of Law in the Information Society, plus general Council of Europe priorities regarding the protection of children and internet content. The Forum aimed at identifying and discussing "responsible" and "irresponsible" behaviour by key actors and how states, industry and civil society can work together (inter alia through partnerships, policy making, greater awareness and education) to ensure the promotion and protection of human rights in the Information Society. On behalf of EDRI, Meryem Marzouki (IRIS, France) and Rikke Frank

EDRI-member ISOC Bulgaria has sent an angry letter in May 2005 to the US Trade Representative about grave errors in their recent Special 301 Report.

The Bulgarian organisation defends the Bulgarian government for its attempts to solve the problems with the illegal usage of software, music and films. In the 5-page letter, also sent to the US Ambassador to Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Ambassador to the USA and to the Bulgarian minister of culture, ISOC-Bulgaria protests against the use of fake data in the report. Allegedly these data were provided by the Business Software Alliance through their Bulgarian representative.

The letter comes as part of the continuous efforts of the Bulgarian Internet Society to ensure that all software companies are treated equally and fairly by the government, in stead of special, complimentary relations. The most recent result of these efforts is a statement by the Bulgarian Minister of State Administration. In May 2005 he announced that he will not renew the contract between the government and Microsoft. This contract was closed in 2002, but has been heavily criticised since, both nationally and internationally.

Romania has adopted a new law to establish a data protection authority. In the last EU access progress report, Romania was severely criticised for failing to enforce privacy rules. "However, progress in implementing personal data protection rules has only been limited. There are grounds for concern regarding the enforcement of these rules: enforcement activities are far below levels in current Member States and additional posts have not been filled during the reporting period."

The new law was initiated by the Ministry of European Integration in October 2004 and submitted to a formal public consultation. The draft was sent to the Parliament in December 2004. The law was quickly adopted by both chambers of the Parliament (Senate and Chamber of Deputies) with minor changes.

Law 102/2005 was finally published in the Official Monitor on 9 May 2005 and will enter into force 30 days after the publication date. The new data protection authority will be created in 45 days after the entry into force.

"Do what you must do and let come what may. Due to circumstances like the Putin presidency you can hope and you can make plans, more or less realistic, and work to get closer to your aim and to help people," that's the more or less stoic attitude that characterises Sergei Smirnov from the Russian Human Rights Network.

Smirnov (1973), with a degree in geophysics, lives in Moscow. He has been the co-ordinator of the Human Rights Network group since its foundation in 1997. He started his NGO career in 1992 as interpreter at the Moscow Research Centre for Human Rights. In 1993 he initiated the 'Information Human Rights Network' program to build a sustainable computerised network of human rights groups all over Russia. He distributed computer equipment and maintained Internet connections to over 40 Russian human rights groups from different regions of the country and conducted a number of technical workshops. More over, he edited the "Human Rights in Russia" bulletin from 1994 to 1997. In 1996, together with colleagues from Ryazan, he started the Human Rights Online website which by now is the largest source of information on human rights in Russia. Since 1998 he works on cyber-rights issues, including online privacy.