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The German government has approved the draft legislation that implements the data retention directive, but the political opposition and the growing anti-surveillance movement shows an important resistance to the new plans of the federal Minister for the interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, who wants an ever increased surveillance.

The draft bill adopted by the German Government on 18 April 2007, was called by the Minister of Justice, Brigitte Zypries, "reasonable and constitutional." But the adopted draft expands what was initially proposed by Zypres, making traffic data accessible not only for criminal prosecution purposes, but also in order to "prevent considerable dangers" and "fulfil the legal duties" of all security police. Zypries also stated

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Opinion of the EDPS: Making the Treaty of Prüm applicable to the whole EU requires a proper general data protection framework (4.04.2007)
http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/...

Press realease (11.04.2007)
http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/...

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The Welsh Government, through Carmarthenshire College, was found in breach of human rights by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for having monitored one of the college employee's e-mails, internet traffic and telephone calls.

As the College is publicly funded, Lynette Copland sued the government for infringing Art.8 of the European Convention on Human Rights that says "everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence".

The government argued that the monitoring was carried out in order to establish whether Copland had extensively used college resources for personal communication, but the court ruled that: "The court is not

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The Commission received these days also a totally new draft of the Framework Decision on data protection in police and judicial cooperation. The proposal was sent by Germany as the EU Council President and reffers to data protection in the security sector.

The draft, made public by Statewatch, includes the establishment of an overriding regulatory authority for all the database systems for criminal prosecution, coordinated by the EU Council and is mainly aimed at ensuring the legal sharing of data between criminal prosecutors.

Germany has however included in the proposal a clause that would implement the sharing of police data with non-member states even if the framework

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After consultations with privacy groups in Europe and the US, Google has decided to reduce to 18 - 24 months, the retention time for data related to users and their searches.

Google is presently storing search information together with IP (Internet Protocol) addresses which can be further on used to identify the person behind a search. "When you search on Google, we collect information about your search, such as the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details," said a Google blog post written by Peter Fleischer, the company's privacy lawyer in Europe, and its deputy general counsel Nicole Wong.

The company has announced that it will now limit this data retention period

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In a decision published on 13 March, the Conseil d'État, the French highest administrative court, cancelled the ministerial order ("Arrêté") by which the Interior Ministry created the ELOI file, a database aimed at facilitating the expulsion of illegal migrants. On 2 October 2006, four French NGOs filed this case against the Interior minister: CIMADE and GISTI (two associations defending the rights of migrants), LDH (the French Human Rights League), and French EDRI member IRIS. While the database creation itself is allowed by the French code on immigration and asylum (CESEDA), the NGOs argued that the ELOI file would contain excessive and inadequate personal data on the foreigners themselves, their children, the citizens with

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Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the follow-up of the Work Programme for better implementation of the Data Protection Directivea
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2007/mar/eu-com-dp-proposals.pdf

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"Restricted" documents circulated among officials in the UK Identity and Passport have shown Home Office plans to fingerprint children aged 11 years and over, beginning with 2010, as part of the programme for the introduction of new biometric passports and ID cards.

The fingerprints are to be stored in a big database expected to cover about half a million children by 2011 that will be also used by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to store fingerprints of asylum seekers.

The programme of introducing biometric elements on ID cards foresees that all citizens over 16 will be taken fingerprints, eye and facial details when applying for passports. Initially, children were supposed to be exempt from