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Deutsch: CleanIT – Pläne zur Überwachung des Internets im großen Stil

A leaked document from the CleanIT project shows just how far internal discussions in that initiative have drifted away from its publicly stated aims, as well as the most fundamental legal rules that underpin European democracy and the rule of law.

The European Commission-funded CleanIT project claims that it wants to fight terrorism through voluntary self-regulatory measures that defends the rule of law.

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Deutsch: CleanIT – ein sichereres Internet … für Terroristen?

The “CleanIT project”, funded by the European Commission and led by the Dutch police, aims to produce a “guideline or gentleman's agreement” to fight terrorism online in a way which does not involve the use of legislation. The latest draft of its proposals was recently made available.

The intention to launch the project was first publicly announced in May 2010, during a European Commission event with the same goal and involving the same industry.

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Deutsch: Frankreich: Update zur Sperre von Webseiten ohne Gerichtsbeschluss

Fleur Pellerin, the French State Secretary for Digital Economy announced on 24 July 2012 the intention of the French Government to give up the Decree on the application of a very controversial Article of LOPPSI 2 law which allowed online filtering of websites with child pornographic content without a court decision.

Article 4 was stipulating that when “the necessities of the fight against broadcasting of images representing minors as per article 227-23 of the Criminal Code justify it, the administra

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: „Kinderschutz“-Maßnahmen ohne gesetzliche Grundlage �...

In the EDRi-gram 10.12, we reported on projects of the European Commission to coerce industry into the introduction of “voluntary” upload filters.

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Deutsch: Russland: Gesetz zur Einführung von Internet-Sperrlisten

At the beginning of July 2012, Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, approved in third reading a draft law titled “On the Protection of Children From Information Harmful to Their Health and Development”, allowing the Russian authorities to create a blacklist with websites deemed to contain “pornography or extremist ideas, or promoting suicide or use of drugs.”

The draft law that is meant to amend the present Law of Information raises concerns of filtering and censorship.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Microsofts Vision einer Kommunikationsregulierung durch pr...

Microsoft is in charge of the “notice and takedown” workstream of the European Commission-funded and inspired “CEO coalition”. It is therefore interesting to take a look at what the world will look like if Microsoft and similar companies are allowed to decide what we are allowed to do on the Internet and what we are not allowed to do. An article published on Norwegian news site Dinside gives a valuable insight.

Morten Tobiassen used Microsoft Skydrive to store back-up copies of his family photos.

For the past few months, the European Commission and industry lobbyists have tried to pressure the European Parliament into abdicating responsibility for ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Instead, the Parliament has given the proposal an inordinate amount of attention, with five different committees devoting huge amounts of time and resources to the proposal. Five different committees looked at the proposal from a development, industry, civil liberties, legal and international trade perspective.

One by one, each of the Committees analysed ACTA, with an ever-dwindling degree of support for the proposal.

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Deutsch: Google Transparenzbericht: Staatliche Zensur nimmt zu

According to Google’s latest bi-annual transparency report covering the July-December 2011 period, the number of governmental requests for users’ private data and content taking down has continued to grow.

The report shows the situation for each country separately and refers to the requests received from judiciary and executive power authorities, the request for content removal related to copyright infringements being dealt with separately.

Thus, the total number of requests has reached 11 936 in the second half of 2011