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The State Council of France validated on 23 May 2007 the automatic tracing of illegal downloading in P2P networks. This decision cancelled the 18th October 2005 CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés) decision that rejected the introduction of surveillance devices proposed by Sacem and other 3 author and producer associations asking for the automatic tracing of infringements of the intellectual property code.

The State Council believes that such devices are acceptable considering the extent of the piracy phenomenon in France. The number of downloaded files decreased by half in 2006 as compared to 2005 but according to GfK institute this is probably due to the evolution from a quantitative type of

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On 21 May 2007, the European Parliament (EP) voted for the reinstallation of the data protection principles in the legislation that allows the police forces in Europe to share data.

The European Council, which is the one deciding in police and judicial matters, had formally asked the EP for its opinion on this issue as, lately, concern has been expressed on the lack of proper protection of personal data processed in the framework of police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters. Such a concern has been expressed also by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Peter Hustinx who, at the end of May, advised the Council against adopting the Commission's new Council Framework Decision

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Google has filed a patent in Europe and in US on a profiling technology planning to create psychological profiles of web users based on their behaviour at playing on-line games. The company thinks it can gather up information to shape the personality of web users according to the way they react and take decisions while playing online and then sell these psychological profiles to advertisers.

The patent says: "User dialogue (e.g. from role playing games, simulation games, etc) may be used to characterize the user (e.g. literate, profane, blunt or polite, quiet etc). Also, user play may be used to characterize the user (e.g. cautious, risk-taker, aggressive, non-confrontational, stealthy,

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The German authorities seem to have a higher desire to push for a legal basis of the online searches of personal computers in Germany, despite the Federal Supreme Court decision in February 2007 that, according to the German Code of Criminal Procedure, decided that online police snooping was illegal.

Wolfgang Schäuble, The German Federal Minister of the Interior, has asked again to adopt stricter security rules that are essential in the fight against terror. Schäuble said that terrorists were beginning to set their sights on Germany and "These days the Internet is the place where terrorists from all over the world arrange to meet". This is why it is essential to make the online searches of computers a legal possibility for the German law

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The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has issued its report for 2006 that includes activities and events as well as the main trends of the past year and draws conclusions related to complaints, developments in security, justice, freedom and new technologies with possible impact on personal data protection.

One of the conclusions of the report is that while the number of complaints has increased, it is still low and only 20% of the complaints made in 2006 were valid.

"A large majority of the complaints received continued to fall outside of the supervisory competences of the EDPS, for instance because they dealt exclusively with processing of personal data on the level of the member

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Commissioner Franco Frattini, who is responsible for the legislation concerning co-operation between European police as well as data protection of European police, has shown public support for privacy enhancing technologies (PETs). Frattini's position is surprising taking into consideration its open support for other privacy-invasive projects such as the data retention directive, EU-US PNR agreement or the planned EU fingerprint database.

A public statement published by the European Commission (EC) on 2 May 2007 directly supports PETs, expecting them to improve the protection of privacy as well as help fulfil the data protection rules.

"The use of PETs would be complementary to the existing legal framework and

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On 1 March 2007 the Austrian Department of Health enacted its highly controversial revision of the Narcotic Substances Act, thus provoking an immediate outcry from both the medical and pharmaceutical associations and privacy experts.

The draft has also been heavily criticised in the run-up to its execution in 2006, Dr Hans Haltmayer, vice-president of the Austrian Association for Medically Supported Therapy for Addicts (ÖGABS, Österreichische Gesellschaft für die arzneimittelgestützte Behandlung von Suchtkranken) describing the amendments as "the ultimate worst case scenario from a medical point of view". In order to receive substitution therapy, under the new law, patients have to agree to have their intimate personal data transmitted by

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Even though Google recently announced the reduction to 18 - 24 months of the retention time for data related to users and their searches, its privacy practices are discussed by the Article 29 Working Group and could be investigated by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The Norwegian Data Protection Group has already sent a letter to the major search engine with concerns over several data protection issues, especially on data retention. A second letter is expected to come from the European Commission on behalf of the Article 29 Working Party regarding Google's compliance with the European data protection legislation. Following this process, if Google privacy practices are considered in breach of the