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Review of the Regulatory Framework for electronic communication networks and services (open until 27.10.2006)
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/consultations/inde...

EU Evaluation Impact Assessment System Questionnaire (open until 30.11.2006)
http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=eias&lang=en

DG Competition Open Consultations
http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/general_info/consultation.html

Bloggers privacy expectations and attitudes Online survey done by Karen McCullagh - PhD researcher at CCSR, University of Manchester. The survey will be open until the end of November.
http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/pr

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On 16-19 October 2006 UNESCO conducted the first multi-stakeholder consultations on the implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Action Lines C3 (access to information), C7 (e-learning), C9 (media) and C10 (ethics) at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France.

UNESCO is one of the lead facilitating agencies for the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines. In accordance with the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society and the consultation of possible Action Line Moderators/Facilitators of 24 February 2006 in Geneva, UNESCO has for the last months served as an interim focal point for several Action Lines. At the Paris consultations UNESCO was approved as the formal facilitator for

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After a 6-month consultation period, an EU study initiated after Cebit trade show in March 2006 shows concerns related to the use of RFID (radio frequency ID) tags and reveals the necessity to assure the public that these tags will not lead to a large-scale surveillance system.

The RFID tags are more and more used by businesses to monitor goods and governments are presently considering the introduction of these tags in ID documents. The RFID market will probably grow spectacularly in the next years. The EU prediction is that more than 270 billion radio-frequency ID tags could be sold by 2016 in the world.

During the EU conference ‘Heading for the Future’ that took place at the end

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EU data protection in police and judicial cooperation matters: Rights of suspects and defendants under attack by law enforcement demands
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2006/oct/eu-dp.pdf

Statewatch's Observatory on data protection in the EU
http://www.statewatch.org/eu-dp.htm

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A small detail on the EU-US agreement over the transfer of air passenger name records (PNR), and a non-related statement by US president George W. Bush, taken together give a nice highlight on the institutional mechanisms of privacy protection.

EU Commissioner Frattini told the press on 6 October 2006 that under the new PNR agreement, the passenger data will be accessible to other US agencies involved in counter-terrorism and law enforcement "on the condition that these have a comparable level of data protection". This formulation of course is absurd if you allow the basically unlimited transfer of data, as the core idea of data protection consists in the protection against further

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A report issued by the Belgian Government on the very discussed SWIFT case of transfer of financial transaction data to the U.S. Government, concluded that SWIFT breached the Belgian law.

The Belgian Commission responsible with the first report on the case stated: "The Commission is of the opinion that SWIFT finds itself in a conflict situation between American and European law and that SWIFT at the least committed a number of errors of judgement when dealing with the American subpoenas."

The report says: "SWIFT should have complied with its obligations under the Belgian privacy law, amongst which the notification of the processing, the information, and the obligation to comply with the rules concerning personal

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In a press conference on 18 September, Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) expressed the opinion that terrorism fighting legislation must observe data protection rights.

The EDPS has advised EU bodies on relevant and very controversial data protection issues like the transfer of PNR-data, the telecommunications data retention, and large scale IT-systems such as the Visa and Schengen.

According to Hustinx, privacy and data protection does not hinder the fight against terrorism and crime.

"It is a misconception that protection of privacy and personal data holds back the fight against terrorism and organised crime. Current legislation however does allow for instance law enforcement to check suspicious phone

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EPIC published the 2005 Privacy and Human Rights Report: "Privacy and Human Rights: An International Survey of Privacy Laws and Developments." The 1,200 page report explores privacy developments around the globe and provides detailed information on emerging privacy topics.

Executive summaries are available in Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. The Privacy and Human Rights 2005 report documents the continued expansion of government surveillance authority. Many countries have pursued new identification schemes, expanded monitoring of communications, weakened data protection laws, and intensified data transfers between public and private sectors.

The report also finds continuing public opposition to