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Deutsch: AEDH und EDRi rufen den “European Civil Society Data Protection Awar...

AEDH (European Association for the Defence of Human rights) and EDRi (European Digital Rights) is launching the first edition of the European Civil Society Data Protection Award (ECSDPA). The prize aims at rewarding positive initiatives contributing to the visibility and effectiveness of the right to privacy and to the protection of personal data in Europe.

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Deutsch: Rechtliche Klagen und Petition gegen zweite französische „Horror-Da...

The French coalition of groups, associations, trade unions and political parties from the opposition is making it clear after its first successful 'No to EDVIGE' in 2008 led to the withdrawal of the EDVIGE intelligence database by the French government, after a massive citizen mobilization (more than 220.000 signatures of a first petition, including almost 1200 signatures from organizations, legal complaints, demonstrations, and all possible democratic forms of protest).

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Deutsch: Europäisches Parlament nimmt Stockholmer Programm an

After six months of preparation, the European Union has almost reached agreement (somewhat behind schedule) on its 5-year plan for policy in the area of "freedom, security and justice", better known as the "Stockholm Programme". Discussions on this proposal took place in parallel, with the European Parliament preparing its opinion on the dossier at the same time as Member States were working towards finalising the "real" text.

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Deutsch: Googles Street View steht vor einer Klage in der Schweiz

Switzerland continues its actions against Goggle's Street View service. The Swiss Data Protection Authority has recently expressed its firm intention to bring Google to court on the matter.

In August 2009, the Swiss Privacy Authority asked Google to interrupt the service and make adjustments to improve its face blurring technique.

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Deutsch: Seminar des Europäischen Datenschutzbeauftragten: Reaktion auf Datenv...

On 23 October 2009 the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) organised a seminar on security breaches. The three sessions focussed on the prevention, the management and the reporting of data breaches.

Background of this seminar was the upcoming reform of the ePrivacy directive (2002/58), which requires telecommunication providers to inform on security breaches related to personal data.

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Deutsch: Das Recht auf freie Meinungsäußerung vs. das Recht vergessen zu werd...

A cease and desist letter sent by a Germany law firm to the English Wikipedia asked for a name to be removed from several articles. The law firm is representing a convicted murderer, released on parole.

The case looks more complicated, as the US have no law on the personality right, but a strong US First Amendment that protects the freedom of expression. But the German law firm considers that the Wikipedia page on Walter Sedlmayr that was murdered in 1990 needs to delete the name of the 3murderers fifteen years after their conviction.

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Deutsch: Bankdatentransfer an die USA kurz vor dem Abbruch

The Swedish EU presidency and the United States government have finalized a draft agreement on bank data transfer for anti-terrorism purposes in mid-November. While the negotiations over the so-called "SWIFT agreement" were held exclusively behind closed doors, the draft has been leaked to the press and was published by the German blog netzpolitik.org (run by German EDRi member Netzwerk Neue Medien) on 11 November and later also by Wikileaks. It stirred a heavy debate in German-speaking media and made front-page news.

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Deutsch: Workshop der Kommission über datenschutzfreundliche Technologien

The European Commission held a workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) on 12 November 2009. The event was supposed to be on the interim report from London Economics on the economic impact of PETs but ended up by being considerably broader.

Dirk Van Rooy (Head of Sector, Trust and Security) gave an overview of the work that DG Information Society had done on privacy issues, also within the context of the Framework Programmes.