On 22 January 2005, the jury of the French Big Brother Awards needed no less than 7 of the famous negative Big Brother Awards to name and shame projects, people, institutions and companies for destroying privacy and promoting control. The minister of Health, Mr Douste-Blazy received a special Jury Award for promoting a new law that created the 'Dossier Medical Partagé', renamed 'Dossier Medical Personnel' (from 'shared medical record' to 'personal medical record'), that puts the entire medical records of every citizen on the internet, in order to spend less money and 'optimise' French medical care.

The Lifetime Menace Award was presented to the 3 French 'homeland security' ministers Vaillant (left wing), Sarkozy & Perben (right wing), who introduced new DNA-sampling powers, not just for sexual & violent

Think twice before buying a ticket to the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. You can only apply for tickets online, and in order to obtain a ticket you will have to answer a questionnaire demanding a lot of personal data. This profile will be linked to a mini spy chip (RFID) on the ticket. Rena Tangens from the German privacy-organisation FoeBuD is calling on all fans to boycott the World Championship because "the World Cup is being abused by sponsors and the surveillance industry to introduce snooping-technology and to spy on the fans."

Tickets will be sold from 1 February onwards. The questionnaire demands date of birth, passport number, telephone and fax number, e-mail, bank or credit-card data, as well as team and club preferences. Fans are not only to hand over their own data but also those of others in whose name they

The European Parliament's rapporteur on the retention of traffic data resulting from all kinds of electronic communications, Alexander Alvaro (Liberal, Germany) has asked the Parliament's legal service to look into the legal foundation for this report. His doubts are founded on the fact that the report contains obligations addressed to civil parties, which is a strong indication that it ought to be in co-decision. As Mr. Alvaro told EDRI-gram, he proposes to split the draft into two separate reports. The first part would contain the law-enforcement side of data retention and remain in the consultation procedure. The other part, dealing with the industry's obligations, would have to be in the co-decision procedure. Mr. Alvaro also considers going to the European Court of Justice to get a

The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti, has published a 270 page cookbook with recipes on how to preserve the freedom of the Net. The Media Freedom Internet Cookbook aims to help users and governments fight "bad content", for example hate speech, without jeopardising freedom.

According to Haraszti "Regulatory activism can lead to suppression of freedom regardless of whether this censorship was intended or came as a consequence of ignorance. I intend to warn about the dangers over the Internet just as I do in the case of 'classic' censorship in the print press or the broadcast media."

The book is a result of major findings of the Second Internet Conference which was organized by the OSCE Media Representative in August 2004 in Amsterdam. The outcomes will be evaluated during the Third Amsterdam Internet Conference in 2005.

The European Commission has approved of a new set of standard contractual clauses for international data transfers proposed by seven international business associations. The contracts are said to offer an adequate level of data protection under the EU's data protection laws. Companies can use the clauses to provide a legal basis for transfers to data controllers outside of Europe as from 1 April 2005. The new clauses will be added to those already available under the Commission's June 2001 decision (IP/01/851).

Companies believe that some of the new clauses, such as those on litigation, allocation of responsibilities or auditing requirements, are more business-friendly. According to the Commission the new clauses provide for a similar level of data protection as those of 2001 and prevent abuses, the data protection authorities are given more powers to intervene and impose sanctions where necessary. The implementation of this new set of clauses will be reviewed in 2008.

Members of the European Parliament have voted in favour of the EU's constitution today (12 January 2005), with a 500 to 137 majority (40 abstentions), setting the EU on a path toward more integration and a little bit more democracy. In the afternoon, the Constitution was celebrated with concerts, balloons and a festive debate involving Parliament President Josep Borrell and author Jeremy Rifkin. While the general tendency of the Constitution, as compared to present practice, is widely welcomed, critics say democratic standards in the Constitution are still far from being satisfactory and there is an inherent risk that the Constitution will freeze this situation for a long time. The vote is seen as being a blow to Constitution opponents in such countries as the UK and France, where the prognosed "no" vote in EU Constitution referenda is

On 1 January 2005, a new law went into force in the Netherlands obliging everybody above the age of 14 to always show ID when asked. Dutch police has immediately started to use the new power by fining dozens of citizens for not being able to present a valid passport, drivers license or ID card. Most citizens were given double fines, for example for riding on a bicycle without proper illlumination, or hanging out in groups and thus presenting a possible threat to the 'public order'. In the city of Rotterdam alone, 20 fines were issued within the first 24 hours of the new obligation. Two of the first fines that became public have raised serious concerns about the actual intentions of the police with their new power.

A young man attended the new-year's reception of the municipality of

The Austrian data protection commission has condemned the marketing firm dm-plus. The firm created a CD-ROM for the company Herold with name and address data of over 4 million Austrian citizens. The disk also contained additional information about 2 million Austrians, such as date of birth, title, type of household, income and civil status. Herold was awarded the people's choice Big Brother Award in 2003. More than 80% of the 250 nominations concerned this company.

Arge Daten, a not-for-profit, non-governmental Austrian privacy organisation, demanded access and correction of the stored data on behalf of several members. The replies were not satisfactory. Arge Daten then sent formal complaints to the data protection authority (DSK) but these complaints were ignored. Only after several complaints to the