The Czech authorities are currently in a debate with telecommunication companies over the exact amounts they will have to pay to reimburse the costs related to the new data retention legislation that came into force at the middle of the last year. The Czech republic already adopted data retention legislation in the middle of 2005, in anticipation of new EU legislation. It stipulates a maximum period of data retention for 12 months. An ordinance of the Czech telecommunication authority (CTÚ) established, in the middle of December 2005, the minimum retention period of 3-6 months for different types of data. The special CTÚ ordinance stipulates the price of each "service" of transmitting data from the operators to the Czech police and the other security agencies.

According to a report on the popular TV station Nova, the Czech police owed

The Slovenian constitutional court issued a decision on 8 December 2005 ascertaining that, in 1996, SOVA (Slovenian intelligence agency) illegally performed eavesdropping to a suspected person later sentenced for unjustified production and trading of drugs. The most aggravating evidences for the defendant were the telephone conversation recordings that SOVA made for the police.

The eavesdropping and recording of telephone conversations were performed in a way that did not exclude the possibility of abuses (montage, erasing, later adding of recordings) and the defence could not examine the transcriptions of the telephone conversations as the documents were labelled as confidential.

From 1993 till 11 April 1997, on the basis of a confidential agreement, SOVA eavesdropped and recorded telephone conversations for the police, which did

On Tuesday 24 January the Irish High Court made an order requiring three ISPs to hand over the personal details of 49 alleged file-sharers. This decision follows a similar decision in July 2005, and was made by the same judge (Kelly J.) in essentially identical terms, including an undertaking that the information would only be used for the purpose of litigation. The judge did, however, specify that the plaintiffs could, if they wished, also pass this information to the authorities for criminal prosecution, describing file sharing as "a modern form of thieving".

Digital Rights Ireland wrote to the parties in advance seeking to have two issues brought to the attention of the court: whether users should be notified of the application and given a chance to respond, and whether the use of the US-based MediaSentry was in breach of national

The French constitutional council judged on 19 January 2006, that the new national anti-terrorism law, submitted by the French Senators, was not anti-constitutional.

The Senators were particularly concerned with two provisions of this law. The first one was the provision allowing the police to obtain communication data without any judicial order, in order to "prevent and punish" acts of terrorism (article 6). The constitutional council only found necessary to remove the word "punish" from the article, otherwise considering the article in compliance with constitution, arguing that prevention is indeed the role of police forces, and finding that enough safeguards were already provided by this article.

The second one was the provision allowing the police to automatically monitor cars on French roads and highways, taking picture of licence

In a public opinion from 20 January 2006, Mr. Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor, was very critical about the wide access possibilities the European Commission wanted to give to the new Visa Information System. The Commission published its "Proposal for a Council Decision concerning access for consultation of the Visa Information System (VIS)" on 24 November 2005.

VIS will be a central database of all visa applications for most EU countries. The database will be connected to national systems that can be accessed by consulates and similar competent authorities within the Member States.

Mr. Hustinx thinks the Commission pays considerable attention to data protection, but he stresses that access must be granted only under specific circumstances, on a case-by-case basis and with strict safeguards.

The German version of the worldwide encyclopaedia Wikipedia was offline for three days, after a legal complaint filed by the parents of a hacker who's real name was mentioned online.

Tron was a German hacker and phreaker who found a controversial death in 1998. Amongst other things, Tron broke the security of the German phonecard by producing working clones. He was also known for his diploma thesis where he created the Cryptophon, which was one of the first public implementations of a telephone with built-in voice encryption.

The Berlin court issued a preliminary interdiction on 17 January against access to the German domain www.wikipedia.de, as a redirect to the German Wikipedia version.

The preliminary interdiction did forbid the redirect as long as the family name was online in the article at de.wikipedia.org. However, the public

In a public answer to a written question by Charlotte Cederschiöld (PPE-DE) on timeframe of the impact assessment of the Data Retention Directive, the European Commission has stated that such an assessment will not take place because " it will not provide any added value".

The European Parliament has adopted on 14 December 2005 a version of the Data Retention Directive, including in the paragraph 2 of the Resolution the necessity of a prior impact study of the directive: "Calls on the Commission for an impact assessment study covering all internal market and consumer protection issues"

The original text of the paragraph, as suggested on 28 November 2005 was " Calls on the Commission, prior to the entry into force of this Directive, to commission an impact assessment study from an independent body representing

On 17 January 2006, a full House of Lords debated at length the purposes,
costs, and details of the proposed identity cards scheme. And in three votes
serious obstacles were raised against the Government. The Government
contends that the card is essential for combating crime, illegal
immigration, and identity theft, and can be achieved for an operating cost
of 584 million pounds per year. Other estimates vary widely, as some have
questioned the ability of the scheme to be delivered, or to be delivered at
cost, and the likelihood that the delivered system will have the desired
effects.

The first vote was on a set of amendments that required the Government to
halt the scheme until detailed costs could be clarified. The vote was 237 to
156 in favour of the amendment, setting the Government back by 81 votes. The