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The year of 2008 can be marked as the year where privacy moved high on the public agenda in Germany. On 1st of January, the law on data retention went into effect, which made Germany drop from number one to seven in the country ranking published by Privacy International. At the same day, a constitutional challenge was submitted at the supreme court. The German working group on data retention and its allies managed to have more than 34,000 people participate in this case - the largest constitutional complaint ever seen in German history.

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The CNIL, the French Data Protection Authority, has published on 20 January 2009 a report on a massive control operation it conducted on the STIC ("Système de traitement des infractions constatées" or "Recorded offences treatment system"), a huge police database. The report reveals that the STIC is consulted by each one of the 100.000 authorised policemen 200 times a year on average. This immediately reminded me the old British Telecom's slogan: "who have you forgotten to call today?"

Police files have been the main concern in France in 2008, especially after the creation, by decrees published on 1st July 2008, of two new intelligence databases, EDVIGE and CRISTINA.

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In Austria the international data protection day on 28 January will pass by widely unrecognised. This year, as already in 2008, the Data Protection Commission (DSK; the Austrian Data Protection Authority) and the Data Protection Council (DSR; a political advisory board) will together organise a meeting for a strictly limited amount of interested persons (max. 100 participants) where they will present European and international developments in data protection. In contrary to 2008, where they were confronted with by far more than 100 registrations, the event was promoted very poorly.

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One particular commercial threat to internet privacy should be looked at very closely by our fellow European Digital Rights campaigners.

That threat is Phorm: an invasive and probably illegal web advertising technology that could soon be coming to you.

Phorm works by looking at the web traffic between you (an ISP client) and the sites you visit. Phorm examines the content of the web pages you visit, and logs keyword information derived from it.

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Privacy is a sporadic keyword in the Romanian mass-media. And even less used in public speech. Becoming an ideal motivation only when talking about some local stars' private life and their juicy intricacies, the real debate on the most important issues lacks completely. The Human Rights Committees in the Parliament seem unfamiliar with the topic and the Data Protection Authority prefers to keep its quiet status.

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I am sorry to say that I am skeptical about "days" dedicated to this or that cause or problem. They are often ignored, sometimes briefly celebrated, rarely leave any relevant trace over time. There are so many that we shall soon have one a week - and it won't be more relevant than brunch on Sunday.

On the loud and confusing current debate in Italy about data protection, the situation could be summarised in four words. More of the same.

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The year 2008 did not improve the course of privacy and data protection in the Netherlands. The public debate focused on data collection systems related to fundamental aspects of Dutch citizens' lives, such as communications, health and movement. Unfortunately, there are no signs that concerns or incidental public outcry over privacy will lead to significant improvements to the design of the systems or reconsideration of their goals, merit and impact on society.

After years of negotiations, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) approved the data protection guarantees in the smart card system for the public transport sector.

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Civil liberties groups La Quadrature du Net, European Digital Rights (EDRi), AK Vorrat, and Netzpolitik.org are urging the European Parliament to heed advice given by the European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx and scrap plans dubbed "voluntary data retention".

"A proposal currently discussed in the European Parliament as part of the 'telecom package' would allow providers to collect a potentially unlimited amount of sensitive, confidential communications data including our telephone and e-mail contacts, the geographic position of our mobile phones and the websites we visit on the Internet", warns Patrick Breyer of German privacy watchdog AK Vorrat.