The Dutch Internet provider XS4ALL has launched a court case against the Dutch State to recuperate the investments it has done to comply with wiretapping legislation. XS4ALL says it has invested half a million euro since 2001 to enable law enforcement authorities to place a wiretap on a specific customer. The Dutch State only reimburses the administrative costs of executing a specific wiretapping order, but none of the costs of purchasing and maintaining the necessary equipment.

In the 49 page subpoena XS4ALL states this cost shift is unfair from the principle of equal discharge of public burdens, unjustified under the European Authorisation Directive and an obstruction to the freedom of speech. Besides, in many other countries providers do get a full reimbursement for wiretapping, such as in Austria (after ISPs had launched a procedure at the Constitutional Court), Italy, Finland, France and the UK. Also in the United States providers are also fully reimbursed for wiretapping costs, creating a serious competition problem for Dutch providers.

The Netherlands National Commission for Unesco has published Recommendations on human rights and Internet, following a conference held on 4 and 5 February 2005. The recommendation focusses on privacy, the right of freedom of expression and the right to communicate, including access to the vast cultural, educational and scientific heritage of mankind.

On privacy, the recommendation calls on States to "Acknowledge that privacy is an indispensable prerequisite to the right of freedom of expression and the right to communicate. Online as well as off-line, readers, listeners and viewers have a right to the same high level of privacy and anonymity. If online access to information is tracked and tied to detailed personal profiles, self-censorship is imminent and - more important still - the public debate and the rule of law are eroded."

After pushing a framework decision on data retention at the EU, Ireland's Government has decided to focus on its national parliament and to pass a law on data retention there. Data retention was snuck into the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act, first introduced in 2002, in the final hours before the Bill became law in February 2005.

The law now calls for three years data retention at all phone companies that provide fixed line and mobile services. The obligation does not extend to more complex information such as location data.

In April 2002, the Minister for Public Enterprise issued directions at the request of the Minister of Justice to oblige service providers to retain data for at least three years. The Government argued that this was a necessary temporary bridging of the gap between the transposition of the EU Directive on privacy and electronic communications into Irish law. This is misleading because the 2002 Directive did not require data retention.

The European Commission has made it clear to all the Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs in the EU that there is no legal basis for a framework decision on mandatory data retention in the third pillar. The draft framework decision on data retention was introduced in April 2004 by the governments of France, the UK, Ireland and Sweden in an attempt to bypass the Commission, the European Parliament and even national parliaments. In the third pillar, the ministers may agree unanimously on a decision to harmonise legislation on police and justice matters, without any co-decision right for the European Parliament and a very limited margin for national parliaments to amend such a decision. In the proposal for data retention this margin is clearly defined. National parliaments may choose a different timeframe for the retention, but only if they review their decision annually and report to the Commission why they are still differing.

The Italian mobile operator TIM, one of the largest mobile phone companies in Italy has issued a unique warning that the number of wiretaps has reached the limit. In a fax sent to all Italian public prosecutors they say that they have already over-stretched their capacity from 5.000 to 7.000 simultaneously intercepted mobile phones. New requests now have to be processed on a 'first come first serve' basis, they write.

Even more unique in the current secretive environment of law enforcement, the Italian Minister of Justice Roberto Castelli (right-wing Lega Nord) has provided the newspaper Repubblica with statistics about the number of wiretaps and costs. The number of wiretaps has doubled every two years, he said, from 32.000 intercepts in 2001, to 45.000 in 2002, to 77.000 in 2003. He estimates the number of wiretaps in 2004 to be 100.000, costing the Justice department aprox 300.00 million euro in cost reimbursements. In 2003 the department of Justice spent 225 million euro on the intercepts, in 2002 230 million and in 2001 165 million.

The EU Data Protection Working Party is calling for public comments on two working documents on emerging technologies. One document explores the privacy implications of RFID chips, the other document covers digital management of rights systems (DRM).

The RFID document outlines the potential use of RFID technology in various sectors and the need to comply with the basic principles set out in the EU data protection directives whenever personal data are collected using RFID technology. The paper also provides guidance to manufacturers of the technology (RFID tags, readers and applications) as well as RFID standardisation bodies. They have a responsibility to design privacy compliant technology in order to enable deployers of the technology to carry out their obligations under the data protection directives.

In preparation for the second phase of WSIS, in November 2005 in Tunis, Unesco has organised two conferences on the Internet and human rights.

On 3 and 4 February Unesco organised a special meeting on online freedom of expression inside of the Paris headquarters. Attended by over 300 delegates from countries all over the world, the conference addressed the applicability of media-law, the limits to freedom of expression, the right of reply, the right to access government information and models of self-regulation.

The director-general of Unesco, Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, kindly opened the conference with a strong speech in which he reminded everybody of the need to uphold the right to full freedom of expression, even in times of fear of terrorism. He stressed that this right does not distinguish between good or bad information, but is about the free flow of ideas, including for example racist speech, which should be debated in the open.

Berichterstatter des Europäischen Parlaments zu dem Entwurf eines Rahmenbeschlusses über die Vorratsspeicherung von Daten, die in Verbindung mit der Bereitstellung öffentlicher elektronischer Kommunikationsdienste verarbeitet und aufbewahrt werden, oder von Daten, die in öffentlichen Kommunikationsnetzen vorhanden sind, für die Zwecke der Vorbeugung, Untersuchung, Feststellung und Verfolgung von Straftaten, einschließlich Terrorismus (Ratsdokument 8958/04)

Note: This is a full-length version of Mr. Alvaro's Working Paper. A version which had to be abridged due to length limitations imposed by the translation service will be presented in the European Parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee on February 1, 2005. Translations of the abridged version into all the EU's official languages will be made available on the LIBE website here, under agenda point 14. A machine translation of the full version, powered by systran, is available here.