The Privacy Camp is an event in Brussels on privacy and data protection challenges and possibilities in Europe, launched by European Digital Rights (EDRi), the Law, Science, Technology and Society research group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB-LSTS) and the Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis (FUSL).

This event is a free-to-attend pre-conference of the Computers, Privacy & Data Protection, on 23, 24, 25 January 2013.

The Irish Presidency of the European Council has distributed a "discussion paper" on the protection of citizens' personal data ahead of this week's Justice and Home Affairs Council in Dublin. As the first Presidency in this “European Year of the Citizen”, we had every reason to expect the Irish to produce novel ways of protecting citizens. Their first suggestions are definitely novel, but certainly are not protective of citizens' fundamental rights.

The CleanIT project has received a huge amount of criticism from outside of the EU institutions. But imagine if the Commission had been alerted to the incoherence of the planned project. Imagine if, before investing 325.796 Euro in CleanIT, the European Commission had been warned that the project lacked methodology and did not represent value for money. Imagine if the Commission's independent checks of the initial proposal gave the project a “value for money” rating that was substantially less than half the minimum average score necessary.

Remarkably, this is exactly what happened.

The draft Report of the European Parliament on the European Commission's proposed Data Protection Regulation was published today. The Parliamentarian responsible, German Green MEP Jan Albrecht, has sought to improve on the Commission's initial proposal and also to address many of the concerns raised by his colleagues in the discussions that have taken place so far in various Committees. The draft text is therefore a mix of straightforward attempts at positive improvements and attempts at compromise based on the opinions so far expressed by his colleagues.

• ECtHR: Blocking Google Sites in Turkey breaches human rights
• WCIT: what happened and what it means for the Internet
• Innovation at risk in EU - the EU unitary patent adopted by EP
• EC decided: no need for more databases for law enforcement
• The European Parliament supports net neutrality
• Companies abuse a loophole in data protection law
• UK government said no to default filtering for online pornography
• Digitale Gesellschaft promotes net neutrality with Vodafail actions
• Export Controls for Digital Weapons
• ENDitorial: Global alliance against CP – no disconnect with reality?
• Recommended Action
• Recommended Reading
• Agenda

Sometimes, watching the Commission make up its mind on a controversial topic is like watching a sports match. One of these topics is the question of whether it is legal for governments to encourage internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict fundamental rights “voluntarily” or whether they would need a legal basis. The European Home Affairs Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström is certain... that they do, that they don't and that they might... possibly.

Today, a large majority of European parliamentarians demanded in two non-legislative resolutions that net neutrality should be enshrined in European Union law.

In the context of a non-legislative resolution on Completing the Digital Single Market, the European Parliament "calls on the Commission to propose legislation to ensure net neutrality" and urges Commissioner Kroes to end her ill-fated "wait and see" approach.