============================================================ EDRi-gram biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe Number 8.12, 16 June 2010 ============================================================ Contents ============================================================ 1. New SWIFT agreement as bad as the rejected one 2. Digital Agenda Commissioner Kroes publicly supporting open standards 3. Turkey extends the censorship of YouTube 4. Possible solutions for remunerating content creators in the digital era 5. Macedonia: Civil society calls for the respect of privacy 6. Copyright and cultural diversity 7. MEPs debating Human Rights for Internet users 8. French journalist facing jail for online releasing of a clip on Sarkozy 9. ENDitorial: New coalition's U-turn on privacy in UK 10. Recommended Action 11. Recommended Reading 13. Agenda 14. About ============================================================ 1. New SWIFT Agreement as Bad as the Rejected One ============================================================ The EU Commission adopted on 15 June 2010 the new agreement with the US Department of Treasury (DoT) on the transfer of data to the DoT's Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP), informally called "SWIFT agreement" because it relies on data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. It had been negotiated since 11 May, after the Council of Ministers adopted a new mandate. The text of the agreement was made public by Statewatch and several MEPs. It is significantly longer than the previous one which had been rejected in February by a large majority of the European Parliament because of privacy concerns. A lot of the new text contains non-binding wording on data protection principles and legal safeguards, obviously written to persuade the reader to think there are real improvements. On substance though, there are not many changes. The agreement is still based on the transfer of "bulk data", i.e. millions of data-sets of all transactions of banks of specific countries for a given time period. These are received by the DoT and stored for five years, just as before. The data can later be searched for specific individuals, account numbers or related information. The transfers now have to be authorized by EU police authority Europol which, according to the text, has to check if the requests are to "be tailored as narrowly as possible". Article 10 of the agreement, on the other hand, gives Europol the right to request data searches in the transferred data from DoT, which will in practice seriously conflict with any incentive the police agency might have in the first place to limit data transfers. While the agreement speaks of legal safeguards and redress options for EU citizens when their data is transferred and processed in the U.S., there are no binding obligations for the U.S. side to introduce the needed changes in their laws, such as in the Privacy Act. The agreement does not contain a sunset clause. The Commission will now send the Agreement to the Council of Home Affairs Ministers, who, after adopting it, will ask the European Parliament for consent. In the Council, there are rumours that some member states are questioning the extension of the mandate of Europol. UK, Denmark and Ireland have opt-out clauses here, so the agreement may actually not apply to them. Many Parliament Members have already voiced criticism, especially over the bulk transfers, the retention periods and the function of Europol, as the EP had asked for a judicial authority to authorize data transfers, not a police agency. A majority for a rejection is not at all clear yet, though. Commissioner Malmstrvm is currently doing heavy lobbying in the Parliament and is talking to individual political groups and members. There also seem to be some legal issues around the Europol function, because a consent of the Council and Parliament would imply that Europol then operates under the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. This is normally done under co-decision procedures, where both institutions have options to change the legislative proposal. In an international agreement such as this, they can only say "yes" or "no". The bulk data transfers and retention periods may also be in conflict with the March ruling of the German Constitutional Court on data retention. TFTP / SWIFT Agreement (14.06.2010) http://www.statewatch.org/news/2010/jun/eu-usa-draft-swift-agreement-com-fin... Statewatch: Comparative Chart of the draft agreement (6 June) and the text agreed by the European Commission - with Commentary (15.06.2010) http://www.statewatch.org/news/2010/jun/eu-usa-comparative-table-swift-tftp.... EU Commission: MEMO/10/258. Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme - Comparison of Council Mandate with draft EU-US Agreement (15.06.2010) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/10/258&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en European Parliament: Resolution on SWIFT/TFTP Negotiations (5.06.2010) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P7-TA-2010-0143 EDRi-Gram: European Parliament needs to reject the SWIFT deal (10.02.2010) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.3/european-parliament-to-discuss-swift (Contribution from Ralf Bendrath, EDRi-member NNM- Germany) ============================================================ 2. Digital Agenda Commissioner Kroes publicly supporting open standards ============================================================ On 10 June 2010, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes addressed the Open Forum Europe 2010 Summit on interoperability and open standards, stating she was planning to overhaul the European Interoperability Framework to make ICT standard-setting more transparent and make sure public administrations use open source formats to prevent the development of monopolies in the sector. Kroes has been supporting interoperability and open standards for some time now and she emphasized again her belief that choosing open standards is a very smart business decision. She reminded she had proposed five actions in the Digital Agenda for Europe in order to "have more and better standards recognised and created in Europe, to make better use of these standards and to improve interoperability in the absence of standards." The new framework that will be developed would include a requirement for standard-setting bodies, such as World Wide Web Consortium and Oasis, to have disclosure rules in order to make it easier for others to use and adapt the technology. The Commissioner believes appropriate rules for ex-ante disclosures of essential Intellectual Property Rights and licensing conditions in standard-setting contexts must be promoted. Transparency of the process is absolutely necessary. "In some cases, the choice of a technology in a standard might be obvious in the absence of technical alternatives. Costs and licensing conditions are less relevant in such cases. But in most cases there are competing options and it makes clear sense to also consider this information." She criticised the authorities that get stuck into proprietary technology for a long time. "This is a waste of public money that most public bodies can no longer afford." Moreover, she also warned that anti-trust litigation was not how she planned to increase interoperability in the market. She expressed her intention to explore "all options to ensure that significant market players cannot just choose to deny interoperability with their product. You no doubt remember that I have some experience with reticent high-tech companies: I had to fight hard and for several years until Microsoft began to license missing interoperability information. Complex anti-trust investigations followed by court proceedings are perhaps not the only way to increase interoperability." This position comes in line with the EU telecoms ministers April declaration to support the freely-available Open Document Format in eGovernment services. Neelie Kroes Address at Open Forum Europe 2010 Summit: 'Openness at the heart of the EU Digital Agenda' Brussels (10.06.2010) http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/10/300 Kroes presses ahead with open IT standards (11.06.2010) http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/kroes-presses-ahead-open-it-standards... EDRi-gram: Two Digital Agendas, but one European Union (19.05.2010) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.10/digital-agenda-europe EDRi-gram: (D') Evolution Summit 2010 and the Granada Declaration (21.04.2010) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.8/d-evolution-summit-grenada-declaratio... ============================================================ 3. Turkey extends the censorship of YouTube ============================================================ So far, Turkey does not seem to be impressed by the criticism against its censorship policy regarding Internet content and blocking of websites. On 4 June 2010, the High Council for Telecommunications reported having asked ISPs to block additional YouTube-linked IP addresses and since then, Turkish Internet users have had problems accessing Google services such as Google Analytics, Google Translate, Google AdWords or Google Docs. The Turkish authorities have been blocking access to YouTube since May 2008 because of videos considered to be insulting for Mustafa Kemal Atat|rk, the Turkish republic's founder. Reporters Without Borders added Turkey to the list of "countries under surveillance" in its report on "Enemies of the Internet," issued in March 2010. "It is time the Turkish authorities demonstrated their commitment to free expression by putting an end to the censorship that affects thousands of websites in Turkey and by overhauling Law 5651 on the Internet, which allows this sort of mass blocking of sites," stated the group. The Turkish president expressed his disapproval to the measures taken by his country: "I do not want Turkey to be included among the countries that ban YouTube and prevent access to Google. (....) If there are problems due to our legislation, there should be ways to overcome that," he said. Google, in its turn, told The Register that it believed its services were banned accidentally and that it would work with the Turkish authorities to solve the issue. "The difficulty accessing some Google services in Turkey appears to be linked to the ongoing ban on YouTube. We are working to get our services back up as soon as possible," says a company statement. Reporters Without Borders also signalled a worrying situation created by the existence of the Turkish law on Internet. Based on the law, Yvrsan, a privately-owned dairy products company, is threatening to sue the news website EmekDunyasi.net if it does not withdraw some old articles that presented the company in a bad light. According to the present law, the site could be closed if it refuses to take down the respective reports and the owners of the site may even go to prison. Article 9 of Law 5651 says: "Anyone who believes their rights are being violated may ask the content provider to withdraw the offending content (...) The content provider or access provider must carry out this request within two days. If the request is refused, the matter can be referred to a police court within 15 days (...) If the court so rules, the penalty for offenders is from six months to two years in prison." EmekDunyasi.net netly refused to comply with Yvrsan's request: "If this company is so attached to its brand value, it should respect the union rights that are guaranteed by the constitution." "This kind of judicial blackmail is a real problem. (...) Few journalists dare to criticise private sector companies or financial groups for fear of reprisals. We urge the Turkish courts not to tolerate Yvrsan's censorship attempt, which could set a dangerous precedent for the online media," stated Reporters Without Borders. Blockage of YouTube spreads to Google services (7.06.2010) http://en.rsf.org:80/turkey-blockage-of-youtube-spreads-to-07-06-2010,37684.... Turkish prez tw*ts YouTube ban - Executive Tweet frowns on Google snuff (11.06.2010) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/11/abdullah_gul_tweets/ Food company tries to censor news website's old reports about union dispute (8.06.2010) http://en.rsf.org/turkey-food-company-tries-to-censor-news-08-06-2010,37678.... Turkey bans Google Books, Google Docs, Google Translate... - Collateral damage from YouTube snuff? (8.06.2010) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/08/turkey_bans_google_services/ EDRi-gram: OSCE asks Turkey to change the laws allowing Internet blocking (27.01.2010) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.2/turkey-internet-blocking-osc ============================================================ 4. Possible solutions for remunerating content creators in the digital era ============================================================ On 8 June 2010, Green Party Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) hosted the conference Financing Culture in the Digital Era on how to balance easy public access to culture with guaranteed remuneration for content providers. The purpose of the meeting was to try and find "mutually beneficial solutions" to ensure access to culture while ensuring a decent living to the creators of online content at the same time. An idea that seems to be gaining more traction as a way of addressing copyright infringement is that of a flat rate or mandated monthly sum paid by Internet users for file-sharing and remixing. Volker Grassmuck, a sociologist, believes a "cultural flat rate" would be needed, that is, a "collectively managed legal permission" for the private and non-promotional sharing of published works in order to end "copyright extremism". He cited two UK studies demonstrating that a large majority of file-sharers are willing to pay for the use of copyrighted items. Philippe Aigrain, co-founder of la Quadrature du net and CEO of the Society for Public Information Spaces, a free software developing company, backs the idea of a flat rate system arguing that the fundamental premise of any approach to charging for listening to music or watching films online should be that sharing files is a basic right. He recommended a new system by which an Internet subscriber would pay a monthly fee of 5 - 7 euro that would generate a fund for paying artists whose work is shared on the Internet. Peter Sunde, from the Pirate Bay and founder of Flattr, a micro-payment network with an open implementing system, presented that type of voluntary financing scheme, by means of which an Internet user would give between 2 and 100 euro per month being able to nominate works that he wished to reward or "flattr". Mr. Sunde thinks that this system responds to the desire of the majority who are "interested in treating people the way they want to be treated". "Givers" and "receivers" are both designated "users". In his opinion, the comments published on a blog might be considered more valuable than the blog's principal text, thus the notion of "creation is something we have to redefine due to the low threshold for creation". Maja Bogataj Jancic, legal counsel with the Institute of Intellectual Property of Slovenia, spoke of how "copyright is at war with technology" and tried to emphasize the notion that there were a whole range of incentives for creating, including grants and state subsidies. Dr. Jancic described the reasons for the success of Creative Commons (today there are 350 million items licensed) and explained how the licensing procedure worked in practice. "Creative Commons licenses are built on top of copyright law," she explained. "They do not exist without copyright law." Ofelia Tejerina from the Spanish group Asociacisn de Internautas, involved in promoting access to public domain material, insisted on a political solution for the transference of "public domain" material across borders. Cay Wesnigk, member of VG Bild-Kunst, considers that the key to a workable solution is transparency since there is a lack of confidence in the distribution system that accounts for infringement. Young people, he believes, are "aware of their moral obligations and realize they are participating in illegal activities but don't care", in other words, there has been an erosion of trust in the legal system. He proposed a "new social contract" between artists and audiences. But Cicile Despringre, director of the Society of Audiovisual Authors, a group representing the film industry, defended the role of collecting societies. The "collective management" of copyright is "still the best system for rewarding creation," she claimed. "There is a need for improvement," she added. "And it is important that we have a direct analysis of how this can be done. Film-making shouldn't directly apply the system used in music. But there is no point in expecting right-holders to give up on their rights." MEP Karima Delli noted that 1.6 billion people worldwide have the means to copy files. "This is the very basis for a shared culture; the internet should be the means by which we democratise culture," she said. "There is no magic solution. We are going to have to try out new economic models to fight against the concentration of powers in many commercial systems applying to cinema and books, etc." The experts at the meeting seemed to have reached a consensus over the fact that the consumers feel that authors should be remunerated and that they don't want to give their money to multinational entities. A societal debate including users and not only representatives of the industry and rights-holders is also needed. Relying on market forces would be a mistake; publishers already exert too much force in the realm of culture. Video recording of the conference http://www.greenmediabox.eu/archive/2010/06/08/culture/ New Business Models Proposed In Debate On EU Culture And Copyright (9.06.2010) http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/06/09/new-business-models-proposed-in-de... ============================================================ 5. Macedonia: Civil society calls for the respect of privacy ============================================================ On 11 June 2010, fifteen Macedonian civil society organizations reacted to the threats to privacy and democracy contained in the Draft Law amending the Law on Electronic Communications, calling for the withdrawal of the text from parliamentary procedure. The call has been supported by more than 365 citizens so far, including prominent solicitors and other intellectuals, and was prepared based on expert analyses, taking into account the views of relevant stakeholders, especially NGOs dealing with human rights protection, expressed in public and at the round table "Privacy in Macedonia" held on 4 June 2010 in Skopje. The reason for this reaction to the proposed amendments is that those amendments are creating legal opportunities for arbitrary and unlimited use of eavesdropping and other forms of interception of electronic communications that violate the basic postulates of the Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia (Article 17 and 25) that guarantee the inviolability of all forms of communication and protection of privacy and dignity. The proposed amendments contravene directly the European Convention on Human Rights and other international agreements ratified by the Macedonian Assembly and the new EU Directive 2009/136/EC, part of the Telecom Package. The amendments circumvent the norms established by the Law on Personal Data Protection, the Law on Interception of Communications and the Law on Criminal Procedure, and grant the Ministry of Interior with a "constant and direct access" to telecommunication networks' traffic data. The initiative launched by the EDRi-member Metamorphosis Foundation, Transparency Macedonia, FOSIM and the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights is supported by the Macedonian Centre for European Training, FORUM - CSID, Kontrapunkt, the Council for Global Cooperation, Reactor, YEF, Children's Theatre Centre, CA Common Values, the Centre for Media Development, Freedom Square, Free Software Macedonia and Civil. The full text of the call is available on the website of the Metamorphosis Foundation, and was also submitted to all MPs in Parliament, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Transport and Communications, and to the Delegation of the EU to Macedonia along with relevant supporting documents. Bardhyl Jashari, the director of the EDRi-member Metamorphosis Foundation says that the proposed law, apart from dangerously limiting citizens privacy and eroding a fundamental human right, was proposed in a non-transparent and non-inclusive manner, without involving relevant stakeholders. Call for protection of citizens' privacy in the Republic of Macedonia (8.06.2010) http://metamorphosis.org.mk/activities/povik-za-zashtita-na-privatnosta-na-g... EDRi-gram: Macedonia: New Law on Electronic Communications Proposed (19.05.2010) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.10/macedonia-new-law-electronic-communi... (Contribution by EDRi-member Metamorphosis Foundation - Macedonia) ============================================================ 6. Copyright and cultural diversity ============================================================ The conclusions of a study commissioned by the Culture and Education Committee (CULT), summarising the state of implementation of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (ratified by the European Community in 2007) has been publicly presented. The study focused on fields where the EU would be expected to provide leadership. A good deal of attention was paid to the regulatory implications of digital media and the research team adopted an emphatically critical approach to the idea of enhancing copyright. The head of the study, Christophe Germann said that while some copyright was necessary, the research team had come to the conclusion that too much copyright "is detrimental to diversity of cultural expression" and that policy-makers in the EU are generally overly exposed to lobbyists that "repeat the prevailing dogma about the need for better copyright law". According to the assessment, policy-makers who only listen to the loudest and strongest voice fail to implement the parts of the Convention they consider most valuable; diversity of cultural expression is particularly threatened by Intellectual Property Rights "in markets that are dominated by big corporations exercising collective power as oligopolies". The study considered selective state aid mechanisms in the audiovisual field to be risky insofar as they represent an incentive to clientelism and a bad model for authoritarian regimes with regard to the possibility of covert censorship and inhibiting cultural entrepreneurship. The study was also highly critical of the fact that, so far, there had not been any formal discussions between the EU and WTO on questions of trade and culture, and pointed out that during recent international trade negotiations the issue of "cultural exceptions" was not even raised by the EU. Dr. Germann noted that culture-related aspects of intellectual property rights might have translated into increasingly well-articulated norms of law. The need to distinguish between patents and public health was also mentioned, and the EU was admonished for negotiating TRIPS-plus, which would "export regulations to jurisdictions that don't have proper competition law to balance protection with IPR". Mira Burri (World Trade Institute) presented an assessment of implementation of the Convention in EU internal policies, and reminded the Commission that mainstreaming a culture obligation into all relevant policy decisions is one of the obligations under the Convention. Ms. Burri said the Commission should be particularly cautious when pushing for extending copyrights "which could also reduce creativity" and "have an important impact on freedom" - especially with respect to the implementation of rules such as 3-strikes and the enforcement of copyright through intermediaries. Overall, she declared, the interests and rights of users are not duly protected in negotiations. Implementing the UNESCO Convention of 2005 in the European Union (14.05.2010) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/studies/download.do?language=en&file=31347 Implementing the UNESCO Convention in EU's Internal Policies (14.05.2010) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/studies/download.do?language=en&file=31355 The Implementation of the UNESCO Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in the EU's External Policies (14.05.2010) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/studies/download.do?language=en&file=31351 A summary of the UNESCO Study http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/cult/dv/esstudyun... (Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi) ============================================================ 7. MEPs debating Human Rights for Internet users ============================================================ On 2 June 2010, the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament (DROI) hosted a parliamentary hearing on the human rights implications of new information technologies and communications networks. Finnish Green MEP Heidi Hautala, the Chair of the Human Rights sub-committee, said that European companies should be encouraged to join the "Global network initiative" and promised to identify possible problems. Andrew Puddephatt from Global Partners and Associates who presented a study on human rights and the new technologies at the request of the MEPs, said the Internet was an "evolving transnational ecosystem shaped by governments, businesses, technologies" which presented "users themselves with tremendous opportunities to strengthen human rights protection and significant challenges". He spoke about the dangers of information and communication technologies, flagging four major areas of concern for policy-making in the transnational environment: new threats to freedom of expression with peer-to-peer, privacy and the growing practice of data mining, the aggregation of intellectual property rights and equality, and the "digital divide". He also added that while the Internet had led to the "democratisation of freedom of expression, taken out of hands of elites to populations as a whole, (...) sophisticated and sometimes hidden censorships tools" were being used by enemies of human rights. He advised that EU could pressure countries in international forums, develop experts on IT issues and offer financial support to NGOs for human rights issues. China's and Iran's policy of Internet censorship were the two cases discussed at the hearing. Lucie Morillon (Reporters Sans Frontiers) presented the increasing levels of Internet censorship and state dissemination of misinformation through the Internet (the list of countries with internet censorship has risen to 60). She called Google's move in China a "courageous stand" which had launched a real debate, though in recent months, she said, through their campaign against "pornography", the Chinese have been shutting down websites that have nothing to do with pornography. She also criticized ACTA for provisions on suspension of access to information and for trying to make "copyright police" out of intermediaries. She would like to see EU-level legislation to ensure net neutrality and future trade agreements with provisions to protect online freedom of expression. As regarding the situation in Iran, Barry French from Nokia Siemens admitted that the company had made an error in providing Iran active surveillance technology for monitoring centres. The European Parliament criticised the company over this and the way the technology had been used by Teheran to intercept mobile telephone calls. In 2009 Nokia stopped all work connected to monitoring centres and started reviewing policies. "We have a responsibility to help ensure that the communications technologies we provide are used to support, and not infringe, human rights" said Barry French at the hearing. Simon Hampton of Google explained that after sophisticated attacks on Gmail, (notably what he called increasing censorship and accusations of being in pornography), in March 2010 Google decided to stop censoring search results in China and redirected traffic from "google.cn" to "google.hk". Shiyu Zhou of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium said China was the best example of cyberpolicing, blocking and filtering calling it a "21st century Berlin wall". He said that "today the internet and satellite TV are probably the biggest hope for global information freedom". Lithuanian MEP Laima Andrikiene ,Vice-chair of the sub-committee, supported an initiative for the Council and Commission to bring China to the WTO and said that the "internet became an important engine for protest and mobilisation". She urged the EU to use the United Nations Human Rights Council to guard against abuses. Friends & foes of the internet & human rights (9.06.2010) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/story_page/039-75595-158-06-24-906... Presentations from the event (2.06.2010) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/organes/droi/droi_20100602_... Subcommittee on Human Rights (2.06.2010) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/homeCom.do?language=en&body=DROI ============================================================ 8. French journalist facing jail for online releasing of a clip on Sarkozy ============================================================ A French journalist may go to jail for having leaked on the Internet an embarrassing off-air video with the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Augustin Scalbert of Rue89, brought to court by the National TV company France 3, was charged with receiving stolen goods. If found guilty, he may get 5 years of prison and an up to 375 000 euro fine. Reporters sans Frontihres have condemned prosecutor Anne-Julie Paschal's decision to place under investigation the journalist who published an article on 30 June 2008 accompanied by a video showing the French President irritated by a technician who had not greeted him before an interview. "We are not in the public service, we are with the demonstrators" said Sarkozy ironically and when journalist Vironique Auger answered "This is France", the president replied "This is going to change". Augustin Scalbert was accused of concealing the video clip considered to be stolen from France 3. It was considered that Augustin Scalbert had "concealed" because he had protected the identity of his source. "The increase of the actions against journalists meant to oblige them to reveal their sources places in danger the investigation journalism in France," said Reporters sans frontiers. A technician from France 3 was also place under investigation for theft in the same case, where a hearing with the prosecutor took place on 11 June 2010. Several French Journalist Associatons have expressed their public support to the two persons under investigation, calling it as a new attack against the protection of the information sources. The French Green Party has asked France 3 to withdraw the action describing the legal move as "an attack on the freedom of the press." A journalist from Rue 89 placed under investigation for "concealment", a threat to journalistic sources (only in French, 11.06.2010) http://fr.rsf.org:80/france-un-journaliste-de-rue-89-mis-en-11-06-2010,37720... Concealer, the other name of the journalist who protects his sources (only in French, update 11.06.2010) http://www.slate.fr/story/22851/receleur-journaliste-sources-justice Journalist facing jail for leaking embarrassing off-air video clip of Nicolas Sarkozy TV interview (14.06.2010) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1286452/Journalist-facing-... ============================================================ 9. ENDitorial: New coalition's U-turn on privacy in UK ============================================================ The coalition Government plans to keep the Summary Care Record, despite pre-election pledges by both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to rip up the system - which is not compliant with the I v Finland judgement of the European Court of Human Rights. Last year colleagues and I wrote Database State, a report for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which studied 46 systems that keep information on all of us, or at least a significant minority of us. We concluded that eleven of them were almost certainly illegal under human-rights law, and most of the rest had problems. Our report was well received by both Conservatives and Lib Dems; many of its recommendations were adopted as policy. Old-timers may recall that back in 1996-7, many of us geeks supported New Labour enthusiastically, as Blair promised not to introduce key escrow. It took him almost a year to renege on that promise; it has taken the coalition less than a month. Blair's U-turn on key escrow in 1998 led to the establishment of FIPR, and a two-year fight against what became the RIP Act (where at least we limited escrow to the powers in part 3). What's the appropriate response now to Cameron and Clegg? It's inconceivable that assurances given to farmers, or to soldiers, or to teachers would be tossed aside so casually. Yet half a million of us earn our living in IT in Britain - there's a lot more of us than of any of them! And many people in other jobs care about privacy, copyright, and other digital issues. So do those of us who care about digital policy have to become more militant? Or do we have to raise money and bribe the ruling parties? Or, now that all three major parties are compromised, should we downgrade our hopes for parliament and operate through the courts and through Europe instead? Coalition Government to retain Summary Care Record (4.06.2010) http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=35&storycode=4126219&c=1 Tories would 'dismantle' NPfIT infrastructure (10.08.2009) http://www.kable.co.uk/conservative-nhs-national-programme-review-obrien-10a... Liberal Democrats' health policy (26.01.2010) http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/general_election_2010/party_policies/liberal_dem... Finland privacy judgment (23.07.2008) http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2008/07/23/finland-privacy-judgment/ Database State (23.03.2009) http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2009/03/23/database-state/ (contribution by Ross Anderson - EDRi-member FIPR - UK) ============================================================ 10. Recommended Action ============================================================ Only two weeks of plenary in Strasbourg are left for Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to have a chance to sign Written Declaration 12 (WD12) on ACTA. 150 signatures are still missing, mostly from Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, and Poland. Every EU citizen is encouraged to call Strasbourg offices of non-signatories MEPs until thursday, 12:00, to urge them to sign WD12. http://www.laquadrature.net/en/wd12-on-acta-150-signatures-to-go-time-to-cal... Privacy International launches new technology site: "Cracking the Black Box", a site devoted to discovering the answers to key technical mysteries behind some of the world's most controversial IT systems. The site encourages experts and whistleblowers to help resolve crucial questions about how technology is designed and deployed. The first two issues being addressed are the Google Wi-Fi controversy and the EU proposal to retain search data. https://boxcrack.net ============================================================ 11. Recommended Reading ============================================================ Rapport on Internet of Things - European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (10.05.2010) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A7-2010-0154+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights - 2010 Annual Report http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/attachments/AR_2010-conf-edition_en.pdf Study on Online Copyright Enforcement and Data Protection in Selected Member States - Netherlands, Poland, UK (04.2010) http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/iprenforcement/docs/study-online-enforce... WIPO: Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain (by Siverine Dusollier, Professor, University of Namur, Belgium) http://www.wipo.int/ip-development/en/agenda/pdf/scoping_study_cr.pdf ============================================================ 12. Agenda ============================================================ 25-27 June 2010, Cluj, Romania Networking Democracy? New Media Innovations in Participatory Politics http://www.brisc.info/NetDem/ 28-30 June 2010, Torino, Italy COMMUNIA 2010 Conference: University and Cyberspace Reshaping Knowledge Institutions for the Networked Age http://www.universities-and-cyberspace.org 9-11 July 2010, Gdansk, Poland Wikimedia 2010 - the 6th annual Wikimedia Conference http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page 25-31 July 2010, Meissen, Germany European Summer School on Internet Governance http://www.euro-ssig.eu 29-31 July 2010, Freiburg, Germany IADIS - International Conference ICT, Society and Human Beings 2010 http://www.ict-conf.org/ 2-6 August 2010, Helsingborg, Sweden Privacy and Identity Management for Life (PrimeLife/IFIP Summer School 2010) http://www.cs.kau.se/IFIP-summerschool/ 13-17 September 2010, Crete, Greece Privacy and Security in the Future Internet 3rd Network and Information Security (NIS'10) Summer School http://www.nis-summer-school.eu 14-16 September 2010, Vilnius, Lithuania Internet Governance Forum 2010 http://igf2010.lt/ 8-9 October 2010, Berlin, Germany The 3rd Free Culture Research Conference http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/display/fcrc/Home 25-26 October 2010, Jerusalem, Israel OECD Conference on "Privacy, Technology and Global Data Flows", celebrating the 30th anniversary of the OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data http://www.oecd.org/sti/privacyanniversary 27-29 October 2010, Jerusalem, Israel The 32nd Annual International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners http://www.privacyconference2010.org/ 28-31 October 2010, Barcelona, Spain oXcars and Free Culture Forum 2010, the biggest free culture event of all time http://exgae.net/oxcars10 http://fcforum.net/10 3-5 November 2010, Barcelona, Spain The Fifth International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues in IT Law. Call for papers deadline: 10 September 2010 http://www.lspi.net/ 17 November 2010, Gent, Belgium Big Brother Awards 2010 Belgium http://www.winuwprivacy.be/kandidaten ============================================================ 13. About ============================================================ EDRI-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe. Currently EDRI has 27 members based or with offices in 17 different countries in Europe. European Digital Rights takes an active interest in developments in the EU accession countries and wants to share knowledge and awareness through the EDRI-grams. All contributions, suggestions for content, corrections or agenda-tips are most welcome. Errors are corrected as soon as possible and visibly on the EDRI website. Except where otherwise noted, this newsletter is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. See the full text at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Newsletter editor: Bogdan Manolea <edrigram@edri.org> Information about EDRI and its members: http://www.edri.org/ European Digital Rights needs your help in upholding digital rights in the EU. If you wish to help us promote digital rights, please consider making a private donation. http://www.edri.org/about/sponsoring - EDRI-gram subscription information subscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request@edri.org Subject: subscribe You will receive an automated e-mail asking to confirm your request. unsubscribe by e-mail To: edri-news-request@edri.org Subject: unsubscribe - EDRI-gram in Macedonian EDRI-gram is also available partly in Macedonian, with delay. Translations are provided by Metamorphosis http://www.metamorphosis.org.mk/edrigram-mk.php - EDRI-gram in German EDRI-gram is also available in German, with delay. Translations are provided Andreas Krisch from the EDRI-member VIBE!AT - Austrian Association for Internet Users http://www.unwatched.org/ - Newsletter archive Back issues are available at: http://www.edri.org/edrigram - Help Please ask <edrigram@edri.org> if you have any problems with subscribing or unsubscribing. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE