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Deutsch: Dänische Steuerbehörde will Festplatten privater Unternehmen spiegel...

A new proposed law would allow the Danish tax authorities to simply mirror entire hard disks of companies without a court order and before they have a reason to suspect the company has engaged in unlawful activities.

The proposal adds the following two paragraphs to the law of tax auditing (unofficial translation):

"Paragraph. 6. Customs and tax administration can make identical electronic copies (mirrors) of the content of electronic media that falls under the control of the customs and tax administrations, and can take the copied material away for subsequent review.

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Deutsch: Neuerliche Datenschutzprobleme bei Facebook Apps

Facebook continues to raise concerns related to the privacy of its users' personal data. According to an investigation made by Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Facebook applications such as FarmVille have been supplying identifying information of its users to several online advertising and tracking companies.

Already in May 2010 it was revealed that under certain circumstances, when a user was clicking on an ad, Facebook was transmitting its ID codes that were used to look up individual profiles, including the user's real name, age, hometown and other data.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Reichlich schlechte Nachrichten vom Europarat

The third Council of Europe (CoE) Committee of experts on new media (MC-NM), held on 27-28 September 2010 in Strasbourg, is likely to dampen enthusiasm.

To start with, the current vice-chair Michael Truppe is leaving the group to hold another position on the Austrian scene.

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Deutsch: Vereinigtes Königreich kommt wegen Phorm vor den Europäischen Gerich...

The European Commission announced that it has referred the UK to the European Court of Justice for an improper implementation of EU data protection rules, following several complaints in the Phorm case.

The Commission received complaints from the UK citizens about Phorm that worked by checking out the web traffic between an ISP client and the sites it visits.

This form of behavioural advertising by ISPs (targeted advertising based on prior analysis of users' internet traffic) was reported by EDRi-member Open Rights Group and others NGOs to the UK Data Protection Authority - Information Co

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Deutsch: Webseite einer britischen Anwaltskanzlei enthüllt private Daten

On 24 September 2010, the website of the UK Law Firm ACS:Law suffered a massive breach of security apparently under a Denial of Service attack initiated by a group entitled Anonymous within the Operation Payback, which led to the exposure of what seemed to be part of the internal email database of the website.

Although the ISP hosting ACS:Law's website suspended the account right after the attack, the site became active again, without any apparent reason, pointing to the root directory of the web and revealing a folder containing an archived backup of the company's mailboxes.

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Deutsch: EU-Bedenken über US-Pläne zur Ausweitung des Zugriffs auf Bankdaten

The EU Commission and MEPs have requested clarifications from US Administration regarding the plans to extend existing anti-terrorism programs targeting bank transfers which would make the EU-US so-called Swift agreement invalid.

The Washington Post announced on 27 September 2010 that the Obama administration wanted to require U.S. banks to report all electronic money transfers into and out of the country thus helping the authorities in spotting transfers that might finance terrorist attacks.

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Deutsch: Keine Wiederaufnahme von Google Street View in Tschechien

For the second time, the Czech data protection authority (UOOU) rejected Google's application to resume its data collection through its Street View system. The Czech data agency had already rejected a similar request from Google in December 2009. However, Street View photographs taken prior to October 2009 will remain online.

Hana Stepankova, a spokesman for UOOU said they had concerns over the legality of Google's service.

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Deutsch: Schweizer Gericht erklärt die Sammlung von IP Adressen für unzuläss...

The Swiss Federal Court overturned on 8 September 2010 a previous court decision and ruled that the software identifying IP addresses of alleged unauthorised music uploaders was infringing the data protection law.

Switzerland-based anti-piracy company Logistep has used software to collect IP addresses from P2P users, seeking for alleged copyright infringers and passing on the addresses to rights holders. The company has thus provided, in the last years, evidence used in lawsuits against individuals accused of copyright infringement.