The Council of Europe is working on a new declaration or recommendation on human rights and internet. An ad-hoc committee of experts on the information society has been meeting for the first time in November 2004, and will have a second meeting in Strasbourg on 3 and 4 February 2005. The Council does not provide any information about the proceedings or specific members of the committee, but has recently published the terms of reference. The aim of the committee is to provide "a draft political statement on the principles and guidelines for ensuring respect for freedom of expression and opinion, for human rights and for the rule of law in the Information Society, with a view to its use as a Committee of Ministers' contribution to the Third Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe (16-17 May 2005) and the 2005 Tunis

The music industry has suffered a severe setback by two verdicts by courts in Munich and Vienna. Both courts ruled that internet service providers did not have to hand-over data about customers. In the Munich case, the Higher Regional Court squashed an earlier verdict that obliged providers to hand-over data about users suspected of operating illegal FTP servers. In July the music label BMG was granted the right to demand information from an access provider, but the execution was suspended during the appeal procedure. BMG even demanded information from the provider on the number of tracks and albums of individual bands or artists downloaded from the server named in the complaint. The Munich appelate court said they had serious doubts "whether the defendant threatened with the injunction is an

Public consultation on new action plan eEurope 2005-2010. Participants are invited to consider how European Information Society policy should evolve over the next five years if the EU is to reach its 'Lisbon Goals' by 2010.

Contributions are invited by e-mail and should be submitted by 16 January 2005.
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/2005/all_about/2010_c...

Lisbon goals portal site
http://europa.eu.int/comm/lisbon_strategy/index_en.html

The Article 29 Working Party of data protection authorities in the EU has developed an interesting and useful model for a standard EU privacy notice, consisting of a short, a condensed and a full legal notice.

Under the European Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC data subjects must be informed of their rights to data protection. The Directive distinguishes between essential and further information. Essential is information about the identity of the controller and of his representative, if any, as well as the purpose of the data processing. 'Further information' includes the recipient of the data, the response obligation and the existence of access and rectification rights, having regard to the specific circumstances in which the data are collected. Going beyond this, there is also a third category of information which is nationally required and goes beyond the Directive’s requirements. This includes information such as the name or address of the data protection commissioner, details of the database and reference to local laws.

The European Commission has adopted, on 7 December 2004, its annual report on the implementation of the EU electronic communications regulatory package. The report states that 20 of the EU's present 25 Member States have notified the Commission that they have adopted primary legislation transposing the package, which became law in 2002. The Commission has launched infringement proceedings against Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, and Luxembourg, who have so far failed to notify transposition. All of these countries have failed to transpose the 2002 e-Privacy Directive, which is part of the package.

The Staff Working Paper attached to the report examines in particular three issues from the e-Privacy Directive, which are according to the Commission "most debated in the market and by national authorities, and which may have a significant impact on the consumer": Data retention, spam, and cookies.

In a response to the European Commission on 9 December 2004, EDRI welcomes the creation of a Human Rights Agency within the European Union.

"The creation of the Agency is especially relevant at a time when, one the hand, many new EU countries have joined through the expansion of member states from 15 to 25 countries and, on the other hand, the European legislation is extending its scope to new fields and sectors, especially those relevant to the third pillar," EDRI states.  

In the response EDRI stresses that since human rights issues cross-cut all policy areas of the European Union the creation of one central Agency must be complemented with more effective human rights mainstreaming in all EU policy areas and activities.

EDRI suggests that the Human Rights Agency focuses on:

1. Strengthening and promoting the protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of law within the member states, and in the EU institutions and work areas.

The European Union's Council of Ministers has decided, during its meeting yesterday, Monday, 13 December, to treat 400 million EU subjects like criminals.

By the beginning of 2008, every EU citizen and resident - with the exception of people living on the British isles and possibly in Denmark - will be fingerprinted when applying for a passport or other travel document. This procedure will be introduced in addition to digitalised facial photographs, which will be taken of every applicant already by the middle of 2006.

The data will be stored on emmbedded chips in the documents. These so-called RFID chips can be read out remotely, and there is so far no reliable way of securing the information contained on them. The project to establish a database holding holding the biometric data of all EU citizens to whom a document containing a biometrics chip has been issued was dropped.

7th annual Privacy and Human Rights survey, published by Privacy International & the US based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). The report reviews the state of privacy in sixty countries and warns that invasions of privacy across the world have increased significantly in the past twelve months.

The 800 page report is available free of charge at
http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/phr2004 (17.11.2004)