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The giant German telecommunication company is under investigation by national prosecutors for a presumed breach of privacy, after having spied on the phone calls of its managers, journalists and even board members.

According to Der Spiegel newspaper, the former monopoly incumbent operator - still 31.7% owned by the German government - illegally monitored the phone calls of parts of its staff during 2005-2006 when the company was laying off workers. It seems the company hired an outside agency to monitor contacts between members of its supervisory board and journalists.

The company has partially admitted the allegations saying the monitoring was carried out to find out who was leaking information to the press. Rene

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On 27 May 2008, the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) called for new legislation that would regulate social networking sites. ENISA, which was created in 2004 to oversee online security measures in the 27 EU countries, issued a preliminary report of its General Report in which it pointed out that social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace need more regulation to protect their users against security risks. "Social networking sites are very useful social tools but we must make recommendations for how to better protect people from the risks these sites create," said Andreas Pirotti, executive director of ENISA and author of the report. He suggested the EU legislation should be expanded in

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The European Data Protection Supervisor warned that the StreetView feature of the Google Maps service could breach the EU data protection laws, if they show the pictures taken from the European cities.

The StreetView service makes it possible for users of GoogleMaps to see several photos that show a 360-degree look on how the city streets or crossings are seen at a street level. But they also get in these pictures the pedestrians that are passing by or anyone in the area. The service is available right now only for some US cities, but Google has started the activities in order to get pictures from some European cities. Their fleet of vans with cameras has been spotted in London, Rome or Paris.

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Ignoring the opinion of the French Data Protection Authority - the National Commission for Information and Liberties (CNIL), on 4 May 2008, the French Government passed a decree on the basis of which the French citizens will have biometric passports that will include eight fingerprints and a digital picture. The data will be introduced in a large national database.

Although symbolical, CNIL's opinion should have been published alongside with such a decree in the Official Journal. The Government's decree went against CNIL's unfavourable opinion given on 11 December 2007 which was published a week after the decree. Alex Türk, president of CNIL reinforced the commission's position on 16 May 2008, on the occasion of the

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An updated version of the Regulation on the Visa Information System (VIS) published by Statewatch reveals that only random checks might be carried out, if there are too many people waiting.

As already presented in EDRi-gram, the legislative package on the Visa Information System that included the VIS Regulation has been adopted by the European Parliament. The system will allow fingerprinting and checking security of all visitors to EU that apply for a visa in their home country. All the details, including fingerprints are held on the central VIS database so that on entry to and exit from the EU identity checks can be carried out. The VIS Regulation will allow consulates and other competent authorities to

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Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) wants privacy and data protection requirements to be considered in the future EU research and technological development (RTD) projects, especially those developing information and communication technologies.

The EDPS' main role is to monitor EU developments which have an impact on the protection of personal data, especially the development of ICT and "to advise the Commission and/or project developers on their efforts to use privacy and data protection-friendly RTD methodologies and of course to develop technologies and processes that will promote and reinforce the effectiveness of the EU data protection legal framework".

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The personal data of about 10 000 customers of the Bank of Ireland (BOI) are now in the possession of thieves as four laptops with the unencrypted data were stolen from the bank between June and October 2007.

The four stolen laptops had been used by staff working for the bank's life assurance division. Not only the customers' data including medical history, life assurance details, bank account details, names and addresses were not encrypted, but the bank notified the thefts to the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland only on 18 April 2008. Furthermore, until now the bank has not written to individual customers whose information was lost.

The case is now investigated by the Financial Regulator as well as by Billy

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To the unpleasant surprise of many Italians, for a few hours on 30 April 2008, the Italian government, through its Agenzia delle Entrate, published on the agency website, agenziaentrate.gov.it, the financial information filed by all Italian taxpayers.

Although operational only for a few hours, many people had the opportunity of seeing how much other people were earning, including celebrities. As Corriere della Sera daily newspaper puts it, the site was "a delicious opportunity to find out with a click how much your neighbour or colleague or, for gossip fans, celebrities earn".

The present centre-left government made public every citizen's declared taxable income as part of a crackdown on tax evasion. The action brought