The US digital rights organisation EPIC organised a panel with a preview of their annual privacy and human rights report, with 7 panellists from all continents, from China to Argentina, and from Israel to the Arab Human Rights Watch. Speaker Alberto Escudero-Pascual from Sweden/Spain focussed on the RFID badges given to every participant. Some participants were given badges in which the mini-chip was included, others were given a cheaper add-on RFID-sticker on their badge. Escudero-Pascual briefly explained the results of his earlier research into the RFID badges handed out to participants in Geneva in 2003.

Though he said the mini-chip could probably not be read at any significant distance and the tags were probably only used at the entrance where everybody had to hold their tag against a reader to match the picture on

On the closing day of the Summit, Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media and Catherine Trautmann, Member of the European Parliament co-hosted a Workshop on "Human Rights and the Information Society". Trautmann (Social Democrats) also was the special rapporteur on the WSIS for the European Parliament. Her report was adopted in plenary on 23 June 2005.

Speakers included: Ambeyi Ligabo, UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Catherine Trautmann from the EU Parliament, Sidiki Kaba, president of the International League of Human Rights, Sharon Hom from Human Rights in China, and Rikke Frank Jørgensen, Danish Human Rights Institute and author of this contribution.

The purpose of the workshop was to cover a range of issues pertaining to

APC, the association for progressive communication, reports on the civil society press conference on 18 November. Civil society representatives from all continents lined up on a panel to deliver a stark closing statement. The civil society statement was not finalised, but four points are addressed: internet governance, human rights, financing and development, and follow-up. The press conference essentially driven by questions of the audience, revolved around issues of development through ICTs.

Renate Bloem of the Civil Society Bureau kicked off the conference by saluting some language used in the official Tunis Commitment such as multistakeholderism. She held up that civil society has become a force to be reckoned with. "We have moved to become a partner in negotiations," she

As host country of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), Tunisia has not lived up to the optimistic expectations of some UN officials, but in stead exceeded the worst expectations of civil society. Many individuals searched their souls whether to attend the Summit or not. But the promise of a Citizens Summit, dedicated to the human rights demands of civil society and inclusive of the Tunisian people and organisations purposefully excluded by the Tunisian government, convinced many of them to come to Tunis and mingle amongst the 23.000 official participants.

In an opinion article titled 'No place to talk about Internet freedom' for the International Herald Tribune, Kamel Labidi, the former director of Amnesty International-Tunisia, describes Tunisia as "one of the Arabs

The European Data Protection Supervisor has started an e-mail newsletter to inform a general public about his activities such as opinions, policy papers and publications.

The October newsletter contains brief information and links to the EDPS's involvement in PNR and the Visa Information System. The newsletter also mentions a policy paper on the conflict between two fundamental rights: access to information and data protection.

European Data Protection Supervisor newsletter
http://www.edps.eu.int/publications/newsletter_en.htm

A broad coalition of human rights organisations has announced they will organise a Citizens' Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, from 16 to 18 November 2005, to coincide with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Citizens groups, civil society organisations, national, regional and international institutions, government delegations and all other interested parties and individuals are invited to participate in the Citizen's Summit on the Information Society.

The CSIS program will consist of a series of panels and conferences addressing main WSIS issues from the public perspective. CSIS aims to first of all send a strong message of support and solidarity from the international civil society to the local civil society and citizens in Tunisia. Secondly, CSIS wants to offer a specific civil society perspective on the main issues debated at the WSIS. In the first phase, in Geneva in 2003, thanks also to constant pressure from civil society, the conference focussed on human rights and social justice as cornerstones of the Information Society.

After the French data protection authority CNIL published a strong rejection of the systematic collection of IP-addresses by the music and film industry, the French minister of Culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, said he would look at the current implementation of the Copyright Directive to override these privacy-hurdles. The proposal for implementation will be discussed in the Lower House for the first time on 6 December 2005.

On 18 October 2005 the CNIL organised a debate with representatives of the entertainment industry to discuss their strategy to deal with unlawful file-sharing. The collecting societies proposed to employ automatic systems to detect copyright infringement on peer to peer networks, and secondly, to force internet service providers to translate a given IP-address into an e-mail address and forward a 'pedagogical' e-mail message from the societies to their customer.

The sixth edition of Swiss Big Brother Awards ceremony was held in Zurich's Rote Fabrik on 29 October 2005. The Swiss jury received 100 nominations in four categories: government, business, workplace and the special life-time achievement award. The financial services branch of Swiss Post, Postfinance, was awarded the business award for the illegal transfer of bank transaction data to the United States. The transfer became apparent after a Swiss man tried to transfer an amount in US dollars to a Cuban travel agency based in Switzerland. Both bank accounts were registered in Zurich. Although the man assumed the transfer was purely domestic it turned out that Postfinance uses its US partner Western Union for all transactions in US dollars. The man was notified that the US Department of the Treasury had confiscated his money because of the US embargo against Cuba. Postfinance advised him to send a protest to the US authorities in order to get his money back. So much for the Swiss bank secrecy.