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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,

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The domestic intelligence agency (Verfassungsschutz) in the German state of North-Rhine Westfalia (NRW) will be allowed to hack into the computers of terrosist suspects, if a bill currently under discussion in the state parliament is adopted. According to the bill, the agency will get the new competence for "clandestine observation or other reconnaissance of the Internet, in particular the hidden participation in its communication facilities or the search for them, and clandestine access to information technology systems by technical means".

The entire ruling conservative-liberal coalition is arguing that this is only a clarification of existing competences for communication

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E-Bay auction site is investigated by UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), as Privacy International has considered the site has infringed the Data Protection Act.

The Data Protection Act obliges companies to allow people to delete their personal information. Privacy International claims that although not impossible, deleting accounts with eBay is very difficult.

Following the complaints of Internet users, Privacy International has conducted a research by asking a sample of representative users to close their accounts with some large online companies present on the UK market. The conclusion was that most of these users could not delete their accounts with companies such as eBay, Amazon or Friends Reunited.

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The event "Travellers privacy and EU" was organised on 3 August 2006 by Prague based NGO Iuridicum Remedium and it brought together Czech and European stakeholders across the spectrum working on technological developments that affect the movement of people across borders.

Speakers came from Data protection agencies within Europe (Italy, Czech Republic, Spain), Czech law enforcement agencies, including the Ministry of the Interior, Czech airlines and the company (Logica CMG) that is producing the RFID-chipped Czech passport - which comes into force on 1 September 2006.

The day was divided into three sessions: the first on the background of travel documents and biometrics, the Schengen Information System, and the

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SWIFT has recently confirmed that it had succeeded in putting some restrictions to the US Treasury's programme of transferring transactional data from them. However, the activities of the company since 2001 are still under investigation by several European bodies.

The US Treasury's programme has been operating, without oversight, by subpoenas, after 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in view of tracking down terrorist funding. US Government has thus gained access to records stored in SWIFT data centres all around the world of financial transactions performed in more than 200 countries. Concerns were expressed as to the extent and amount of data transferred.

SWIFT has announced during August 2006 that the US Treasury agreed they

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Scheduled to start operating in June 2006, the Schengen Information System II (SIS II) that would allow the competent authorities in the Member States to obtain information regarding certain categories of persons and property, will be delayed, as it resulted from a meeting of ministers of the interior and ministers of justice from EU member states in Brussels.

The reasons given for the delay were related to legal and technical problems. Several European data protection commissioners who are supposed to approve of SIS II have shown resistance to the system considering there is not enough information of the way in which the collected data will be used by the police. The degree of access of the

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Following a complaint by a German citizen against the Hamburg State on the way the public authorities may handle the personal data and a series of arguments from the European Ombudsman and European Data Protection Supervisor, the European Commission decided to review its interpretation of the Data Protection Directive, in order to provide a more extensive protection.

The German citizen made an infringement complaint in 2004 to the Commission against the State of Hamburg. The complainant considered that the public authorities were breaching Article 14(1)(b) of the EU Data Protection Directive when the public authorities could hand over personal data to companies, even when they knew that the date were used for direct marketing

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As previously reported in EDRI-gram the international financial surveillance programme run by the US government and involving the European company SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, based in Belgium) continues to raise discussion in several countries in Europe.

According to SWIFT's Austrian board member, Günther Gall, 150 million data sets of transactions were forwarded to US intelligence services. The whole SWIFT board, including Mr. Gall, has known about this since the beginning in 2001. This is "less than 1 percent" of all transactions, but it is nevertheless a breach of privacy laws and financial secrecy. Members of Austrian business organisations have also voiced big concerns