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On 30 September 2008, the Munich District Court decided in a provisional ruling that website operators were not violating the data protection legislation when storing IP addresses of their visitors as IP addresses alone are not considered personal data.

The case was brought to the court by an individual who argued that storing IP addresses in log files by a web publisher represents a privacy violation because the information could be used to identify him and relate his identity to his web surfing activity.

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As previously announced in EDRi-gram, St. Edwige day in France was a day of protests against the file project called Edvige, a file that would gather information on any person, including minors, considered by the police as a "suspect" capable of disrupting the public order.

On 16 October, on St.

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On 11 October 2008 Prague hosted the DIY Carnival which marched through the city centre in the name of the worldwide initiative "Freedom not Fear".

Starting with a concert of several music groups on the river island Stvanice, more than 1000 people wearing masks outnumbered crowds of tourists on the fancy streets of the Old Town and protested against increasing surveillance within the society.

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The first worldwide protests against surveillance measures such as the collection of all telecommunications data, the surveillance of air travellers and the biometric registration of citizens were held on 11 October 2008 under the motto "Freedom not Fear - Stop the surveillance mania!". In at least 15 countries citizens demanded a cutback on surveillance, a moratorium on new surveillance powers and an independent evaluation of existing surveillance powers.

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Some of the amendments passed by the European Parliament (EP) on the Telecom package are still worrying the civil rights groups, both on data retention and IP issues. Also, the fact that some amendments of the EP do not appear in the new document of the European Council working party on Telecommunications and the Information Society creates more confusion.

According to information from Patrick Breyer from the German Working Group on Data Retention, amendment 181 passed by the European Parliament regarding directive 2002/58/EC could be read to legalise "voluntary" blanket data retention practices as currently practised in the US.

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Following a complaint placed in July 2008 by campaigners against the British companies BT and Phorm for their allegedly illegal secret ISP-level adware trials, the London Police decided not to investigate the case arguing there had been implied consent of their customers. BT started its third trial of Phorm technology on 30 September, this time asking the consumers to opt-in.

Phorm is used to monitor a user's web browsing history, taking a copy of the places the user goes to and search terms he (she) looks for.

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Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, gave her first public speech on social networks at the Safer Internet Forum on 26 September 2008, which confirms the interest of the EU bodies on this topic.

The commissioner emphasized the growth of the social networks in Europe: "56% of the European online population visited social networking sites last year and the number of regular users is forecast to rise from today's 41.7 million to 107.4 million in the next four years. In 2007 9.6 million British belonged to the country's social networking community, with 8.9 million and France and 8.6 million in Germany.

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A draft European Commission regulation has in view the introduction of millimetre wave imaging scanners in airports to be used "individually or in combination, as a primary or secondary means and under defined conditions". The scanner will provide a "virtual strip search" of travellers within the EU.

The regulation is meant to be introduced in all the EU countries by the end of April 2010. The new technology creates an image of an unclothed body.