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a. Data Retention - a reality

15 September 2007 - data retention became a reality in Denmark. The administrative order, which sets the scope and conditions for data retention, was approved on 28 September 2006 with an implementation deadline of one year. The order, which was drafted by the Ministry of Justice, had been underway for more than four years. The Act providing for data retention was approved by the Danish Parliament already in June 2002 as part of the Danish "anti-terrorism package," which extended the scope of Section 786 of the Administration of Justice Act (Act No. 378 of 6 June 2002).

The administrative order regulates in more details the obligations of the

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UK-based human rights group Privacy International (PI) published at the end of last year the 2007 ranking assessment of the state of privacy in 47 countries, including all European Union member states.

The raking is based on the Privacy & Human Rights reports produced since 1997 by PI together with US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and is taking into consideration several criteria such as constitutional & statutory protection and privacy enforcement, biometric ID cards, data-sharing, video surveillance, communication interceptions and data retention.

According to the authors, the project wants to "recognize countries in which privacy protection and respect for privacy is nurtured. This is done in the

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During Infolaw legal forum on 17 October, Margot Artner, a Viennese lawyer, expressed concerns regarding the existence of about 100 000 illegal monitoring systems with recording functions in Austria. The estimation was based on information obtained from vendors of monitoring software and installing technicians.

Artner has waited for seven months in order to obtain from the data protection commission the first permit for the operation of the video monitoring system. The conditions required by the commission include the deletion of records after 48h and the limitation of the access to the recordings to only qualified staff that would have to work in pairs.

The only previous permit had been given to Wiener Linien (Vienna's public

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The European Commission (EC) has adopted a green paper on surveillance technology used by the civil society in the fight against terrorism, that will be open for public consultation until the end of this year.

The green paper, resulted from a public conference (Public-Private Security Dialogue: Detection Technologies and Associated Technologies in the Fight against Terrorism) that took place in November 2005, is meant to find the best technologies to be used "in the service of the security of its citizens" as was stated by European Commission Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security.

Some of the issues on which the green paper is focused are: standardisation,

On May 10 2006, a public hearing was held in the Danish Parliament on a new proposal for an anti-terror act including surveillance measures. The proposed law may increase camera surveillance, obliges carriers to store passenger data for one year and introduces new measures for the intelligence service. According to the proposal, the intelligence service may obtain personal data from other authorities regardless of whether there may be specific considerations for not forwarding the data (such as professional secrecy). Data may be obtained regardless of whether there is a specific suspect or the intelligence service wish to investigate all individuals having done something specific such as passing by a certain location or borrowing a certain book from the library. This is a measure which has

Teachers protest against the installation of 50 CCTV systems with microphones in UK schools, used as surveillance measures by the school management.

While observation in class was supposed to help teachers in improving their performances, the headmasters, who have also used two-way mirrors to survey the teachers, grade them according to the way they perform in class under observation.

TES (The Times Educational Supplement) reported on 7 April that teachers were being "observed to death" and that surveillance was being used more like a punishment. Observed lessons are often graded on a scale of outstanding to poor.

The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), the largest teachers' union in UK, has proposed a conference motion to use "all means necessary" to stop the "yet another example of management

The 6th edition of the French Big Brother Awards taking place in Paris on 3 February has chosen the following in the 5 different award sections, for causing the most damage to personal privacy.

The Orwell Award for State official - the winner was Jean-Michel Charpin, Directeur de l'Insee (INES) for his participation in the INES project (Electronically Secured National Identity card). By this project he created a direct link to the Ministry of Interior Affairs ignoring the separation between population statistics and police administration. The card will include two biometric identifyers on a RFID chip.

The section for enterprises was won by Lidl (at close range to Carrefour) for having installed 65 video cameras for the surveillance of 60 employees in a store. The company has had similar policies in other countries as well.

The French constitutional council judged on 19 January 2006, that the new national anti-terrorism law, submitted by the French Senators, was not anti-constitutional.

The Senators were particularly concerned with two provisions of this law. The first one was the provision allowing the police to obtain communication data without any judicial order, in order to "prevent and punish" acts of terrorism (article 6). The constitutional council only found necessary to remove the word "punish" from the article, otherwise considering the article in compliance with constitution, arguing that prevention is indeed the role of police forces, and finding that enough safeguards were already provided by this article.

The second one was the provision allowing the police to automatically monitor cars on French roads and highways, taking picture of licence