In Hungary, the fourth annual ceremony of the Big Brother Awards will take place on 25 November 2004. Nominations for the person, company and organisation that have excelled in violating privacy and enhancing control over citizens can be entered via a webform until 28 September. From 11 to 25 October internet users will be able to vote for the winners from a shortlist.

Nomination for Big Brother Awards Hungary
http://www.bigbrotherawards.hu/NTD/index.php

"This is not something industry wants", a representative from the Danish IT-industry Association stated at a meeting on data retention in Copenhagen on 21 September 2004. The meeting was arranged in response to the massive criticism raised by the industry, cooperative housing associations, civil liberty groups and others earlier this year. The meeting was convened by the Ministry of Justice to discuss next steps for the draft Administrative Order and code of guidelines.

At the meeting it was decided to establish an expert working group with industry representatives to assist in the drafting process. It was also mentioned that the retention order most likely will exempt chatrooms, which were included in the first draft. However, the concerns raised in relation to disproportionality, discrimination, financial burdens, and

Telephone traffic data are only necessary to solve crimes in a minority of police investigations. Most cases can be solved without access to traffic data, with the exception of large fraud investigations.

These are the conclusions of a Dutch police report produced at the request of the Dutch ministry of Justice. The report was recently obtained by the Dutch civil liberties organisation Bits of Freedom through a public access request.

The report undermines the Dutch government's support to the EU draft framework decision on data retention. The report makes no case for the proposed data retention as Dutch police already uses traffic data in 90% of all investigations. The police can already obtain, with a warrant, the traffic data that telecommunication companies store for their own billing-

The protection of privacy and personal data is an integral part of the principle of human dignity, as enshrined in all important documents on Human Rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the draft European Constitution. It should therefore be a priority in any civilised society. These were the conclusions of Stefano Rodotà, for many years the Chairman of the Article 29 Working Group of EU Member States' Data Protection Commissioners, at a Conference uniting 26 countries' Data Protection and Privacy authorities last week in Wroclaw, Poland.

This annual Conference, held for the 26th time, had as a motto, inspired by Rodotà, "Right to Privacy - Right to Dignity". It dealt with numerous single issues, ranging from Radio Frequency Identification chips (RFID) to

The consultation from the European Commission on new EU plans for mandatory retention of telecom traffic data resulted in 65 answers, most of them negative about any regime of mandatory data retention. Two thirds of the answers came from industry (telephony and internet providers, both individual companies as well as associations) and almost one third from civil society, including the one from Privacy International and European Digital Rights.

Besides, 3 national Data Protection Authorities filed an answer, and 1 (unnamed) ministry of Justice. Philip Gerard, responsible for the regulatory framework within the Commission's DG Information Society, presented these results during an open workshop on data retention on 21 September in Brussels. In spite of the explicit and repeated requests to law enforcement authorities, none of them answered any of the specific questions about the need for which data to be retained for what period of time, Gerard said.

90 civil rights organisations across Europe, the United States and other countries around the world have signed a long statement against the recent EU plans for mandatory data retention. Also 89 companies (mostly specialised in IT) have endorsed the statement that calls the plans 'invasive, illusory, illegal and illegitimate'. The statement was an anwer to an EU consultation on mandatory data retention, and presented during the workshop described above.

The full list of endorsements includes international organisations like APC International, the Association europeenne pour la defense des droits de l'Homme (FIDH-AE) and the Transnational Party, with the personal endorsement of Marco Cappato. Cappato was rapporteur of the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communication (2002/58/EC) and did his utmost best

The European Parliament's LIBE Committee (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs) organised an interesting opening session of the new parliamentary year on 21 September. For the occasion, the parliamentarians were joined by colleagues from a number of national parliaments. They had invited two speakers representing the opposite poles of EU Justice and Home Affairs policy. First, Gijs de Vries, who was nominated the EU's anti-terrorism co-ordinator in March after the Madrid bombings, followed by Peter Schaar, the chairman of the Article 29 Working Party, which brings together national Data Protection Commissioners from all 25 EU Member States.

Mr. de Vries, who was accorded considerably more speaking time than Mr. Schaar by the LIBE Chairman, French Liberal Jean-Louis Bourlange, spoke on EU counter terrorism policy in very general terms, emphasising his role to support national authorities, not to patronise them. MEPs concerns were mostly on the transposition of measures decided in the EU as part of the policy to combat terrorism in the Union's member states.

Privacy International (PI) and European Digital Rights (EDRI) have published their joint answer to the consultation on mandatory data retention. The Directorate Generals on Information Society and on Justice and Home Affairs from the European Commission asked for public comments on a proposed retention regime across Europe between 12 and 36 months for all traffic data generated by using fixed and mobile telephony and Internet.

90 civil rights organisations across Europe, the United States and other countries around the world have responded rapidly in showing their concern about this trend of increasing surveillance in such a disproportionate way. Also 89 companies (mostly specialised in IT) have endorsed the statement.

The response can be found at http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/terrorism/rpt/responsetoret...

The EU plans the wide-spread retention of personal data resulting from communications, or so-called traffic data. We argue that any such retention is necessarily a hazardously invasive act. With the progress of technology, this data is well beyond being simple logs of who we've called and when we called them. Traffic data can now be used to create a map of human associations and more importantly, a map of human activity and intention.

As technologies become more invasive, and as laws are increasingly reluctant to protect individual rights, the European Union should be fulfilling its role to uphold the rights of individuals. Data retention is an invasive and illegal practice with illusory benefits.

General background information

• http://www.privacyinternational.org/retention
• quintessenz EU Data Retention Doqubase