Like most digital rights or information technologies conferences held since Edward Snowden’s revelations early June, the PRISM scandal and the NSA surveillance program were intensively discussed at the 2013 Public Voice Conference.

Edward Snowden’s opened Pandora box keeps revealing extended eavesdropping of intelligence services.

EDRi joined a huge international coalition in calling upon European and UN institutions to assess whether national and international surveillance laws and activities are in line with their international human rights obligations.

EDRi has endorsed a set of international principles against unchecked surveillance.

On 5 September 2013, the Civil Liberties (LIBE) committee from the European Parliament organised a first inquiry hearing, which included Jacques Follorou from Le Monde, Jacob Applebaum from the Tor and Wikileaks projects, Alan Rusbridger, editor in chief of the Guardian, Carlos Coelho, EPP MEP and former chairman of the Echelon committee and Gerhard Schmid, former socialist MEP and rapporteur of the Echelon report and Duncan Campell, investigative journalist.

Jacques Follorou explained the French interception system. He explained that there exists absolutely no parliamentary control, neither any control organism, this system obeying only to the executive and having its own sharing logic.

The Freiheit statt Angst (Freedom Not Fear) mass anti-surveillance rally took place in Berlin, Germany on 7 September 2013.

The event was organized by a broad civil coalition of over 80 NGO, associations and parties demanding an end to surveillance and a clear statement from the government on the surveillance scandal.

While the organizers expected more than 10 000 protesters, on 7 September 2013 more than 20 000 people were present in Berlin's Alexanderplatz not just for the march, but also for the opening and closing rally.

“The demonstration is a huge success. There are four times as many of us as there were at the last demo in 2011!

Civil society groups European Digital Rights (EDRi) and the Fundamental Rights European Experts Group (FREE) have demanded an end to lawless spying on individuals around the globe. At a meeting with the Chair of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee today, the two groups handed over a document containing detailed analysis of the current European and US legal frameworks. The document will be submitted to all relevant policy-making and governmental bodies.

In light of recent revelations, which have profoundly undermined trust in online communications tools, there is an urgent need for transparency, predictability and proportionality.

Top-secret files obtained by the Guardian from former contractor Edward Snowden reveal that NSA and GCHQ, that is the US and British intelligence agencies, cracked the online encryption used by people to protect their personal information such as emails, banking and medical records.

The guarantees offered by Internet companies to their consumers that their personal data are secure appear to be extremely thin in reality.

A NSA 250 million dollar/year program, known as “Sigint [signals intelligence] enabling", has been used in collaboration with IT companies to introduce weaknesses into encryption products so that intelligence agencies may attack "the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet".

Civil society groups European Digital Rights (EDRi) and the Fundamental Rights European Experts Group (FREE) have demanded an end to lawless spying on individuals around the globe. At a meeting with the Chair of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee today, the two groups handed over a document (pdf) containing detailed analysis of the current European and US legal frameworks. The document will be submitted to all relevant policy-making and governmental bodies.

In light of recent revelations, which have profoundly undermined trust in online communications tools, there is an urgent need for transparency, predictability and proportionality.