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Civil liberties groups La Quadrature du Net, European Digital Rights (EDRi), AK Vorrat, and Netzpolitik.org are urging the European Parliament to heed advice given by the European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx and scrap plans dubbed "voluntary data retention".

"A proposal currently discussed in the European Parliament as part of the 'telecom package' would allow providers to collect a potentially unlimited amount of sensitive, confidential communications data including our telephone and e-mail contacts, the geographic position of our mobile phones and the websites we visit on the Internet", warns Patrick Breyer of German privacy watchdog AK Vorrat.

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Eavesdropping devices that are being sold through adverts are mostly used by pupils for cheating at their school exams, and by men who doubt their wives' fidelity.

"Hey, let's meet, we should not discuss this over the phone." This sentence has long been used among friends, colleagues and relatives, but today, if something important is to be discussed, the sentence would rather be "Let me whisper something to you, but check your ear first".

Today, the technologies for communications monitoring and recording conversations are so advanced, practically unnoticeable, and easily available - they can be bought through an advert for only 250 denars!

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The Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) has been fined for having placed a private detective in a restaurant in Seville, in 2005, to film a wedding in order to prove that the restaurant was using music for which it had paid no royalties.

The court in Seville where the action was heard found that the video presented by SGAE as proof against the restaurant was inadmissible because it was "a clear violation of the constitutional rights to a person's own image" and it was in breach of the privacy of the couple because it had been taken clandestinely.

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Earlier this year, in April, the Government of Finland presented a bill to the Parliament for an amendment to the Act on Data Protection of Electronic Communications. Raison d'être for the bill officially is that it would allow employers to investigate the log data of employees' e-mails, if the company has reason to suspect that corporate secrets are leaking out of the company or that the employer's communication networks are being misused. The employer would not be allowed to read the content of the messages themselves, however.

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On 2 December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave its judgement on the case K.U. v. Finland, considering that Article 8 of the Convention asks for national laws that will protect people from serious privacy infringements on the Internet, but at the same time demands a legal framwork that permits the identification and prosecution of offenders, respecting digital rights.

In this case brought to the ECHR an unknown person or persons placed an advertisement on a dating site on the Internet in the name of the applicant, who was 12 years old at the time, without his knowledge.

(Article corrected on 18 December 2008 on DNA database figures and the Counter Terrorism Act 2008)

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On 4 December 2008, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave its judgement in the Marper case related to the controversial National DNA Database used by the UK Police for criminal investigations, stating the retention of cellular samples, fingerprints and DNA profiles constitutes an infringement of the right for private life as per Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case was brought to court in 2004 by Michael Marper and a boy called "S" who, in separate, unrelated cases, had been taken their DNA after having been arrested.

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Two reports were published on 24 November 2008 by UK Ministry of Justice related to the data breach notification law, the powers of the Government to share data and the Information Commissioner's inspection powers and funding arrangements.

One of the reports states that the law requiring that significant data breaches should be notified to the Information Commissioner Office was rejected, the ministry considering that the notification should be subject to good practice and not to a law: "As a matter of good practice any significant data breach should be brought to the attention of the ICO and that organisation should work with the ICO to ensure that remedial action is t

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The Irish Government has approved the outline of a Bill which, if passed by Parliament, will permit police to break into private property to plant covert audio bugs and video cameras. The Covert Surveillance Bill is intended to legitimise what is already believed to be existing practice, to make Irish law compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights and to allow evidence obtained in this way to be used in court. Judicial approval will be required before this can be done, except in exceptional circumstances.

The procedure to deal with cases of exceptional urgency is too lax.