In a report titled " Threatening the Open Society: Comparing Anti-terror Policies and Strategies in the U.S. and Europe" and released on 13 December 2005, Privacy International compared the anti-terrorism approaches in the U.S. with those in Europe. The report finds that on every policy involving mass surveillance of its citizens, the EU is prepared to go well beyond what the U.S. Government finds acceptable, and violates the privacy of citizens.

The report is highlighting the differences between EU and US in terms of access to communications data, retention of communications transactions data, data profiling and data mining, access to passenger reservation files and biometric registration and is concluding that in each case the EU is implementing surveillance powers well beyond those in U.S., and with far

In November 23, the anti-terrorist draft law proposed by the Ministry on Internal Affairs of France, Nicolas Sarzoky was voted by a large majority of the deputies of the National Assembly. The law facilitates the surveillance of communications allowing the police to obtain communication data from telephone operators, Internet Services Providers, Internet cafes. ( see EDRI-gram 3.18)

In December, the Senate voted also (202 for and 122 against) the law, even though it was harder than expected. Several members of the socialist and communist groups sent the law to the Constitutional Council considering that this law gives a too high power to the Internal Affairs taking at the same time the issue out of the hands of the judges.

Adopted in an emergency procedure, this law comes after a series of other

The international conference "e-Society.Mk" took place in Macedonia in October and November 2005, with the goal of raising awareness and sharing knowledge of decision makers about important information society issues with the general public. It was organised by Foundation Metamorphosis and supported by OSCE Mission in Skopje and the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, in line with the recently adopted National strategy for the development of the information society.

Over thirty international and local experts interacted with an audience of around 400 participants in all events, discussing the topics of freedom of the media on the internet, e-business and cybercrime, copyrights and privacy, e-government and e-education. The audience consisted mainly of representatives of central and local government, IT experts, NGOs, journalists and university students (law, economics and IT).

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled on 25 November 2005 in a landmark case against the freedom of internet users to express their opinion anonymously. The Supreme Court upheld a previous court verdict in which internetportal Lycos was forced to hand over the personal data of one of its subscribers to the Dutch stamp trader Pessers.

Mr Pessers trades in postage stamps on the auction portal eBay and was accused of fraud by a Lycos subscriber, who published Mr Pesser's name on his website. Subsequently Pessers demanded the personal data from the subscriber in order to sue for damages. But Lycos refused and was taken to court. After the initial verdict, Lycos did hand over the data, but only to find out the address data were false. Pessers started another procedure, to force Lycos to find other ways to retrieve the correct information, but that demand was declined.

Digital Rights Ireland will formally launch at a press conference in the Conference Room in Pearse Street Library, at 11-am on Tuesday 6 December. The group has been formed to defend civil, human and legal rights in a digital age. Digital Rights Ireland will be discussing its mission, and current developments in relation to Data Retention, IRMA legal action and other matters.

Digital Rights Ireland is chaired by UCD Law Lecturer TJ McIntyre and is comprised of academics, journalists and technologists. The group believes that citizens' digital rights are being eroded - the rights we expect in the real world are being stripped from us in the online world. Protection of these rights will involve public promotion of digital rights, and lobbying for their protection where required.

Digital Rights Ireland is a contact point for policy makers who wish to gauge the impact of their regulation in this complicated, and sometimes technical, area. In addition, the group aims to provide an informed position on issues in the digital rights field, free from any commercial or political bias. Current areas of concern for the group include data retention, rights to privacy/data protection, helping people to fight spam, and intellectual property issues. Digital Rights Ireland also aims to inform citizens of their rights, and how to exercise them. To that end, collaborators already have produced pamphlets and research material on areas such as SMS spam and the Data Protection & Freedom of Information Acts. Further pamphlets, on matters such as libel liability for online speech, will follow shortly.

Like France, Denmark is also working on a new round of anti-terrorism measures, to be presented to Parliament in the spring of 2006. The proposals are quite far reaching and encompass a range of intrusions into citizens' digital privacy.

Among the most notorious proposals are: - a recommendation to let the authorities monitor the entire spectrum of telecommunications taking place within a delimited geographical area such as an apartment complex; - to allow intelligence services to request any information stored in any government database about any citizen without it being part of an ongoing investigation; - the introduction of mandatory screening of airline passenger lists by intelligence services; - to oblige all operators of services for electronic communications to implement technical measures to enable the authorities to wiretap any given communication at short notice.

The French government has decided to apply the urgency procedure to a new anti-terrorism draft law, with only one reading by each Chamber. The draft law was already passed by the National Assembly (French Lower House) on 29 November 2005 and will be examined by the French Senate in late December or early January 2006. The proposal creates increasing powers for the police and the intelligence services, thus undermining the protection of formal judicial procedures.

The law will extend the use of video-surveillance, authorising private parties to install CCTV cameras in public places "likely to be exposed to terrorist acts", and in places open to the public when they are "particularly exposed to risks of aggression or theft". Obviously, this covers almost any public or privately-owned place, including shops. In case of emergency, CCTV cameras may be installed prior to any authorisation.

IPJustice organised another panel on P2P, filesharing and digital rights on 17 November 2005, with Robin Gross as moderator.

The first speaker was the Canadian law professor Michael Geist, also editor of the excellent daily newsletter BNA's Internet Law News. He started by telling that a few months ago IFPI had sued 2.200 people in 17 countries for filesharing, but none in Canada, and proceeded to speculate why that is. He explained Canadian laws are different. There is no DMCA equivalent and Canada hasn't ratified the relevant WIPO treaties. Furthermore Canadian policymakers are increasingly recognising the need for copyright reform instead of swallowing all the content industry's claims.

Markus Beckedahl of Netzerk Neue Median (and EDRI) spoke about the situation in Germany and in particular the implementation of the European