============================================================ EDRI-gram biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe Number 5.3, 14 February 2007 ============================================================ Contents ============================================================ 1. Online police searches found illegal in Germany 2. MEPs support again the rules on defamation in Rome II 3. The ORG and FIPR week of e-voting events 4. Towards a committee for French on-line services regulation ? 5. European Central Bank found accountable in the SWIFT case 6. Belgium court backs decision against Google 7. European institutions try to impose a stronger position in the PNR debate 8. Bulgaria fails to protect citizen's personal data 9. House of Lords produces report against the AVMS directive 10. French Court decides on the sequel of Les Miserables 11. Recommended reading 12. Agenda 13. About ============================================================ 1. Online police searches found illegal in Germany ============================================================ The German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) in Karlsruhe ruled, on 5 February, that, according to the German Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO), online police snooping was illegal. As the court argued, StPO had no provisions to allow the authorities to perform online snooping, the code allowing only overt searches. Magistrate Ulrich Hebenstreit had already ruled against house searches arguing that such searches had to take place in the presence of the person affected. He emphasized that the data stored on computers could often be confidential and compared online spying measures to electronic eavesdropping. The Protection of the Constitution Act on the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia has recently included a provision that allows online PC searches against which a complaint of unconstitutionality is presently being prepared. Consequently, Federal Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schduble, is now asking the legislators to create a legal basis for the criminal prosecutors to perform online searches ,that he considers indispensable. Jvrg Crozier, President of the German Criminal Police Office, asked also for new legislation to support these actions and stated "We have to be able to keep up with new technologies when unscrupulous criminals hide on the Internet, where they can plan their attacks and prepare their criminal actions." At the same time, he wanted to assure the German citizens that they shouldn't worry about the Government monitoring them in a way that would violate their rights. "These measures will not even affect 99.9 percent of the population." Ziercke stated that the Internet was playing a major part in the war against terrorism, child pornography, neo-Nazi propaganda and other types of crimes but can also play an important role in committing those crimes. "The Internet is the criminal platform of the future. In fact, it is the criminal platform of today." On the other hand, Burkhard Hirsch, the former vice president of the lower chamber of Germany's Federal Parliament and a member of the opposition Free Democratic Party (FDP), considers online search by the police of a PC as "worse than a major eavesdropping operation." He declared to the German newsmagazine DerSpiegel that spying a computer through the Internet is a "more brutal form of intrusion" than previous criminal investigation methods. Surreptitious online searches of PCs are illegal (6.02.2007) http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/84867 German criminology czar believes that online searches are urgently needed (7.02.2007) http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/84908 Germany outlaws secret police snooping (6.02.2007) http://www.out-law.com/page-7737 EDRI-gram: Proposal of computers online searching in Germany (20.12.2006) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.24/computer-online-searching ============================================================ 2. MEPs support again the rules on defamation in Rome II ============================================================ The European Parliament has voted in its second reading on the Rome II Regulation to reintroduce the rules regarding the defamation by media or publications via the Internet and other electronic networks. The Rome II regulation is establishing the rules on the applicable law to non-contractual obligations. . The member states and media organizations wanted a simple formula to be introduced and not to apply the general principle - the applicable law to be that of the country in which the defamed person lives. That would practically mean that every media company would have to know the privacy and defamation laws of every European country. At the first reading in July 2005, MEPs had approved a compromise amendment that regulated the violation of privacy by a printed or audiovisual media. The Council decided to delete this provision from its Common Position. In the vote in plenary, MEPs decided to reintroduce the same rules, as adopted at the first reading. The Parliament's amendment suggests that in the case of print or broadcast media the law which should apply in disputes is the law of the country to which the publication or broadcast is most directed. That must be determined in particular by the language of the publication or broadcast or by sales or audience size in a given country as a proportion of total sales or audience size or by a combination of those factors. If that is not an easy fact to determine, the relevant law will be the one of the country where editorial control is exercised. This provision will apply also to publications via the Internet and other electronic networks. Regarding the right to reply, the applicable law should be the law of the country in which the publisher or broadcaster has its habitual residence. Strong disagreemnts between the Council and the Parliament still exist especially on the defamantion rules. According to Commission Vice-President Franco Frattini, who spoke before the vote, on the approved rules on defamation, "there is no way they will get through" in the Council. MEP Diana Wallis stated her satisfaction on the result of the vote, but also warned: "We may not have reached the end of the story of Rome II; by again passing these amendments there will almost certainly have to be a conciliation process to iron out the final difficulties between the European law-making institutions." The text adopted by the Parliament should go now through the conciliation procedure, where Member States and MEPs, equally represented, will have to debate further to find a compromise and approve the Regulation. Rome II: MEPs reintroduce rules on defamation (18.01.2006) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/008-1942-015-01-03-... 01-20070112IPR01917-15-01-2007-2007-false/default_en.htm European Parliament stands firm on cross-border defamation law(2.02.2007) http://www.out-law.com/page-7726 EDRI-gram: Rome II: Applicable law and freedom of expression (29.06.2005) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.13/RomeII EP Legislative Observatory Rome II file http://www2.europarl.eu.int/oeil/file.jsp?id=235142 ============================================================ 3. The ORG and FIPR week of e-voting events ============================================================ Last week there were three e-voting events hosted in London by EDRI members, the Open Rights Group (ORG) and the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR). On 6 February guests saw a screening of the documentary film "Hacking Democracy" which reveals in detail the failings of e-voting and e-counting systems in the United States. After the film a lively panel, chaired by ORG's e-voting co-ordinator Jason Kitcat, discussed the film's implications particularly given e-voting pilots planned in the UK for May 2007. On the panel were John Pugh MP (Liberal Democrat); Russell Michaels, one of the film's co-directors and Dr Rebecca Mercuri, an e-voting expert from the United States. On 8 February there were two events which gathered, for the first time, a wide array of e-voting experts and activists from around the world. In the afternoon the European e-Voting Activism Workshop was started with a keynote by Harri Hursti, a Finnish security expert who has demonstrated a number of major security flaws in US election systems. Mr Hursti discussed how he compromised an optical counting system to provide the finale for "Hacking Democracy". He also shared his views on the wide variety of ways in which e-voting and e-counting systems are vulnerable to fraud and error. Subsequently experts from Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands and the United States presented the problems they were experiencing with the introduction of e-voting in their countries. Attendees were struck by the strong similarities between all the presentations: - Governments would, with extremely weak standards in place, contract the running and monitoring of elections to private companies; - These companies would do minimal testing and withhold the results of those tests; - Problems and possible indications of fraud would arise during and after elections. Further investigation would be impossible due to failings in the technology and/or due to obstruction by vendors and government. After the workshop's broad overview of e-voting, the evening event "e-Voting: A challenge to democracy?" provided time for more detailed presentations. Margaret McGaley, the founder of Irish Citizens for Trustworthy e-Voting, reported on the thus-far abortive attempts to introduce e-voting machines to the Republic of Ireland. She noted that early in the process experts had offered advice but weren't listened to. After pushing on at great expense the Irish government were forced to create an Independent Commission on Electronic Voting which found serious flaws in the Nedap voting machines and software purchased. Dr Anne-Marie Oostveen, a founder of the Dutch "We don't trust voting computers" foundation, reported how in the Netherlands the government position went from 'trust us' to uncertainty. "We don't trust voting computers" demonstrated on national TV several important hacks on the Nedap machines used in the majority of Dutch municipalities. The result was the withdrawal of SDU machines from elections and the creation of an independent commission to examine the voting process. Colm MacCarthaigh, a founding member of Irish Citizens for Trustworthy e-voting, now following the Dutch situation since it has become resident in The Netherlands, tied together the Dutch and Irish stories. He commented on how the Irish independent commission's report had provided information on the Nedap machines which had helped the Dutch activists find flaws more quickly. The successful Dutch hacks, in their turn, helped apply more pressure on the Irish government. Dr Rebecca Mercuri presented the latest developments concerning voting technology in the United States. She noted how vendors, when forced to create voter-verified paper audit trails, had created unreliable, barely usable systems which had created new problems of their own. In place of e-voting machines Ms Mercuri advocated the use of paper ballots, perhaps optically or barcode scanned. To conclude Ms Mercuri argued that Internet voting, as proposed for the UK's 2007 pilots, was an inherently flawed technology that should not be pursued. One question which kept being asked after every one of our events was, why are governments pushing so hard for e-voting technology when the problems are so evident? We just don't understand it. The events ended with the activists resolved to meet more often and collaborate through a newly formed umbrella grouping, 'Europeans for Verifiable Elections'. The Open Rights Group will continue its campaign against e-voting in the UK and our sister organisations will carry on their work across Europe. Audio, video and slides from the events will be available soon http://www.openrightsgroup.org Europeans for Verifiable Elections http://www.efve.eu (Contribution by Jason Kitcat - EDRI-member Open Rights Group) ============================================================ 4. Towards a committee for French on-line services regulation ? ============================================================ French Internet regulation history seems to repeat itself, as shows a recently unveiled administrative decree project, which aims at creating a "National Commission for the deontology of on-line public communication services". The Commission would be in charge of elaborating "deontological recommendations" towards professional on- line communication services, including fixed and mobile telecom operators, ISPs, publishing and distributing services. The Commission would also be in charge of attributing "quality labels" to these services. However, these recommendations would also indirectly apply to the users of these services, through subscribing contractual clauses, especially since a "quality label" may be withdrawn by the Commission when it is found that "deontological recommendations" are not respected. The Commission should include of 23 members nominated by the French Prime minister for 5 years. Besides representatives of different ministries, one magistrate and one member of the French Conseil d'Etat, the Commission should include 14 members representing both - and in parity - online communication services users and professionals. French digital rights organizations have soon denounced this new attempt of censorship. EDRI member IRIS notes that this proposal sounds very similar to the first attempt of Internet regulation in France in... 1996, through what was popularly called the "Fillon Amendment" to the Telecom law. This amendment was found unconstitutional in July 1996, and then its major provisions were censored since, according to article 34 of the Constitution, fundamental freedoms may only be limited by the legislator, while in this case there were no specified binding principles for recommendations to be made by an administrative Commission, with strong impact on freedom of expression. IRIS reminds that these arguments from the Constitutional council examining the 1996 law still apply and may well be reused against a 2007 administrative decree before the competent jurisdiction. Draft of administrative decree (in French only, 07.02.2007) http://odebi.org/docs/Projetdecretcommissiondeontologie.pdf Polemics on the regulation of French Internet (in French only, 09.02.2007) http://www.01net.com/editorial/341006/legislation/polemique-autour-de-la-reg... lation-de-l-internet-francais/ APRIL Press release - Internet Regulation : always the good old methods...(in French only, 12.02.2007) http://www.april.org/articles/communiques/pr-20070212.html IRIS Press release - + Fillon Amendment ; 2.0 : help, the public expression +deontology ; returns ! (in French only, 14.02.2007) http://www.iris.sgdg.org/info-debat/comm-deontologie0207.html (Contribution by Meryem Marzouki, EDRI-member IRIS - France) ============================================================ 5. European Central Bank found accountable in the SWIFT case ============================================================ On 1 February, Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) gave his opinion on the role of the European Central Bank (ECB) in the SWIFT case, considering the bank as accountable along with SWIFT for failing compliance with the European privacy laws in the secret US investigation into terrorist finances. By using SWIFT's services in its own payment operations, the ECB has become a joint controller being thus co-responsible in ensuring compliance with data protection rules, meaning observing the purpose limitation principle, informing to data subjects, and ensuring guarantees at the transfer of personal data to third countries. "Just as other banks, the ECB can not escape some responsibilities in the SWIFT case which has breached the trust and private lives of many millions of people. Secret, routine and massive access of third country authorities to banking data is unacceptable. The financial community should therefore provide payment systems which do not violate European data protection laws" affirmed Hustinx in a written statement. He gave the ECB until April to demonstrate that it complies with data protection laws. However, the ECB does not admit any responsibility in the matter considering data protection was not its concern but financial stability was. It also considers the legislators should have given clearer guidance. "The monitoring of SWIFT activities that do not affect financial stability is not a matter for central bank oversight and, therefore, the US Treasury subpoenas of SWIFT were outside the purview of central bank oversight. The Oversight Group has no authority to oversee SWIFT with regard to compliance with data protection laws," was ECB statement. The bank said it would notify the organisations for whom it conducts transactions and ask for their consent before sharing their data. It also appreciated the initative of the EU and US data protection authorities, intelligence agencies and financial regulators to find a way to properly monitor international organisations like SWIFT. The EDPS also addressed the ECB asking them to transfer data to third parties only when they can guarantee the privacy protection of the owners of the data transferred. The punitive actions that Hustinx could take against ECB are limited. As SWIFT has no credible alternative, asking the ECB to stop using their services would not be a reasonable measure. EDPS calls on ECB to ensure that European payment systems comply with data protection law - Press release (1.02.2007) http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/EDPS/P... essNews/Press/2007/EDPS-2007-1-EN_SWIFT.pdf ECB blamed (again) for SWIFT privacy debacle (1.02.2007) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/01/ecb_swift_edps/ Hands off our bank data, Europe tells US (23.11.2006) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/23/ec_swift_ruling/ EDRI-gram: SWIFT found in breach of Belgian laws (11.10.2006) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.19/swift ============================================================ 6. Belgium court backs decision against Google ============================================================ In the case brought by Copiepresse, a trade group representing 17 Belgium newspapers, against Google for publishing links to newspaper articles without permission, the Brussels Tribunal upheld its previous decision and ruled that Google violated the copyright law. Google was ordered to remove Belgian newspaper content from its search engine results. The search engine is no longer allowed to refer to articles, pictures or drawings of Copiepress members without previous agreements that are to be negociated, non-compliance being fined by 25 000 Euros per day. The ruling also says that any other copyright holder could get in touch with Google and notify its copyright infringement. In this case Google has to remove the content within 24 hours or pay a 1 000 euros a day fine. Google will appeal the judgment as it considers that making reference to a page is no violation of the law and is actually in favour of the Belgian newspapers by sending Internet users to their websites. "Search tools such as Google Web Search and Google News are of real benefit to publishers because they drive valuable traffic to their websites and connect them to a wider global audience," said the Google spokeswoman. Some Belgian journalists have also considered that the court ruling will lead to newspapers loosing readers as the traditional print newspapers are in decline. "We want more readers, not less readers. Belgian newspapers will not make the internet work by trying to stand against the tide of global change," said a journalist. The Belgium press plays at who gains looses with Google (Only in French13.02.2007) http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-651865,36-866673@51-837044,0.html Google must respect copyright (Only in French 13.02.2007) http://www.rtbf.be/info/societe/ARTICLE_070337 Google to pay #2.4m over 'copyright breach' (13.02.2007) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/13/wgoogle113.x... l Google will appeal Copiepresse decision (13.02.2007) http://www.out-law.com/page-7758 Belgian Court Decision (13.02.2007) http://www.copiepresse.be/copiepresse_google.pdf EDRI-gram : Belgium says no to Google News (26.09.2006) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.18/google_be ============================================================ 7. European institutions try to impose a stronger position in the PNR debate ============================================================ The European Parliament intends to strengthen its opposition to the US demands related to the transfer of European air passenger data (PNR). Following the debate that took place on 31 January 2007 in the European Parliament, the vote on the position that EU should have concerning the new PNR agreement to be signed with USA on 31 July 2007 was delayed. The end of the temporary agreement with the US gets closer and the US maintain their threat to fine non-compliant airlines and deny them the landing rights in the US. The American authorities already indicated that they had no intention of changing the terms of the agreement to a better data protection and privacy standards. The Commission and the Council of Ministers have come to join the EP in its position to this matter and they are very likely to ask for a shorter list of data categories and the limitation of the access to these data only to US immigration officers. Very strong positions were expressed during the session by Guenther Gloser, Germany's deputy foreign minister and the European commissioner in charge of justice and home affairs issues, Franco Frattini. "There is therefore the need to negotiate a very solid and stable legal framework which will enable the exchange of PNR data with the United States with full respect of data protection and privacy rights." said Frattini. He expressed his concern related to the U.S. Automated Targeting System, system by means of which millions of people have been assessed since 2002, information made public only recently. The system is considered illegal even in US by the Congress and some privacy advocates. The Commissioner also added: "I have said on a number of occasions that the right to privacy is for me non-negotiable. It has to be respected, fully and completely. Legal certainty is also an important element for air-carriers. It must be taken into account, as it has been from the very beginning. ..the Commission is committed to continuing to give due consideration to privacy on the one hand and legal security on the other, as they form key principles of this file, without forgetting the importance of preventing and fighting terrorism and related transnational crimes." He also stressed the fact that the negotiations would be very challenging requiring imagination and effort both from EU institutions as well as from the US "in order to reach a very robust, solid solution." In the absence of an agreement, the airlines will be placed in a very delicate situation between being fined by US for failing to provide the data or sued for non-complying with European data protection laws in case they do so. New developments in this matter will probably occur during this week's EP session. Data transfer to US: MEPs raise pressure (1.02.2007) http://www.euractiv.com/en/justice/data-transfer-us-meps-raise-pressure/arti... le-161367 Europe preps for battle with U.S. over traveller data (1.02.2007) http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/01/HNbattleontravelerdata_1.html European Parliament: Joint debate on a new agreement on Passenger Name Records (PNR) and on SWIFT data (31.01.2007) http://www.euractiv.com/29/images/PNR+SWIFT_tcm29-161379.pdf EDRI-gram : EU-US PNR agreement formally adopted by the EU Council (25.10.2006) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.20/pnr ============================================================ 8. Bulgaria fails to protect citizen's personal data ============================================================ A recent report made public by the Bulgarian National Audit Office about the activity of the Commission for Personal Data Protection (CPDP) in Bulgaria in the period 1 January 2003 - 31 December 2005 shows that CPDP has failed in achieving its main purpose - to protect the citizen's personal data. Parts of the National Audit Office report have been translated by Bulgarian NGO Access to Information Programme and published on Statewatch. According to the report, the CDPD has spent approx. 1.35 million Euro for its activities, but has completed only 17 investigations at citizens' complaints. The Commission has failed in creating the mandatory registry of personal data processors and hasn't imposed any sanction so far. Moreover, there is no policy in place, strategy or established goals for the personal data protection field. The National Audit Office has considered that CPDP did not function as a permanent working body since the main part of its staff has predominantly maintained working relations with other employers. The report noted that no legal provisions regulates the registration procedure, and the CPDP had not adopted written rules, procedures and methodology for exercising control over the activities of the administrators. The objects of control, the types of control activities and their scope are not explicitly defined, the powers of the controllers are defined vaguely and incompletely. The flaws of the present data protection legislation and its implementation have been highlighted by Access to Information Programme. The insufficient protection of personal data in Bulgaria was criticized in the European Commission monitoring reports in the pre-accession process, as well. Bulgaria: The Commission for Personal Data Protection in Bulgaria has done little for the protection of personal data - 1.35 million. Euro were spent instead (01.02.2007) http://www.statewatch.org/news/2007/feb/01bulgaria-dp.htm Audit Report of the CDPD (only in Bulgarian, 30.01.2007) http://www.bulnao.government.bg/pages.html?catID=18 Access to Information Programme - Bulgaria http://www.aip-bg.org ============================================================ 9. House of Lords produces report against the AVMS directive ============================================================ A report of the Lords European Union Committee offered new reasons to oppose the Commission's draft Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS), successor of the Television Without Frontiers Directive, that will extend television regulation to some Internet video services. The Directive was approved in its first reading by the Parliament in December 2006 and should be backed now by the Council of Ministers. The Directive, as it is now drafted, applies only to commercial TV-like services, but concerns still exist on the vagueness of what this would cover and the fear that the regulation might be wrongly applied to other content such as that of blogs. Lord Freeman, chairman of the Lords European Union Committee stated: "Such an attempt risks damaging the new media industry, which is a vibrant and important sector of the UK's economy." The report warned that the Directive might cause production companies outside of the EU to try and escape the regulation, considering UK would be one of the main victims of this action. The Lords committee considers that EU as regulator should not help to preserve the dominance of the players already established on the market and does not see the necessity to introduce "quantitative restrictions on advertising in a market which is now clearly open to competition". "We are concerned that the identification of some of media services as 'television-like', may lead some to conclude that eventually 'like services' should be regulated in a 'like-manner', i.e. a perfectly 'level playing field'," said the report. "If these services are to be included at all we agree that they must be regulated differently, but the wording and definitions in the latest versions of the text may encourage the idea that they can and should be regulated in the same way as television. We would consider such a move now or in the future to be a grave error." The EU presidency, presently hold by Germany, expressed its wish to finalise the Directive by June 2007. The new act should be implemented within 2 years into the national legislations of the member countries. Television Without Frontiers - Report with Evidence - House of Lords - European Union Committee, 3rd Report of Session 2006-07 (23.01.2007) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/ldselect/ldeucom/27/27.pdf Lords oppose new media Directive (8.02.2007) http://www.out-law.com/page-7742 EDRI-gram: New Audiovisual Directive: First Reading in EU Parliament completed (20.12.2006) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.24/avms EP Legislative Observatory AVMS Directive file http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=5301252 ============================================================ 10. French Court decides on the sequel of Les Miserables ============================================================ The French Cour de Cassation (the highest Appeal Court in France) has taken a decision regarding a sequel of the famous French book Les Miserables, that was contested by one of the descendants of Victor Hugo. The Court has refused to ban the appearance of the sequel and has taken into consideration the right of adaptation and not just the moral right of integrity. However, the procedure is not over yet. The case started six years ago when the great-great-grandson of Victor Hugo, Pierre Hugo, considered that two books published and marketed by Plon publisher as the sequels of the famous "Les Miserables" were breaching the moral rights of the author. Victor Hugo's masterpiece is in the public domain, but, under the French law, the moral rights of the author are considered timeless and are passed on to descendants. The Court of Appeal decided in March 2004 that Hugo's heirs were right in their demands and condemned Plan in paying a symbolic 1 Euro as damages. The Appeal Court considered that no sequel could be made on such a masterpiece as Les Miserables, without breaching the moral right of the author, that thought that his work was complete. However, Plon appealed the decision to the Cour de Cassation. The Cour de Cassation has reached a different conclusion. It considered that a sequel of a work is mainly related with the right of adaptation, which is one of the limited rights of the author (seventy years after its death) contrary to the moral rights that are timeless. Since the work is in the public domain, anyone has the right to write a sequel of that work. A different opinion would mean the extension of this limited right and a violation if the freedom to create new works. Therefore the mere writing of a sequel could not be considered a breach of the moral rights of a work, irrespective of the work quality. Consequently, the case was sent back to the Court of Appeal, where different judges should consider if the twobooks are really infringing the moral rights of the author. Les Misirables, sequel or end ? (only in French, 2.02.2007) http://www.lesechos.fr/info/metiers/4532468.htm Heir of Victor Hugo fails to stop Les Mis II (31.01.2007) http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2002303,00.html ============================================================ 11. Recommended reading ============================================================ Data Protection Working Party - Opinion 1/2007 on the Green Paper on Detection Technologies in the Work of Law Enforcement, Customs and other Security Authorities http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/fsj/privacy/docs/wpdocs/2007/wp129_en.pdf ============================================================ 12. Agenda ============================================================ 15-16 February 2007, Brussels, Belgium Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area Access, Dissemination and Preservation in the Digital Age http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/page_en.cfm?id=3459 19-23 February 2007, Geneva, Switzerland Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO Development Agenda: Third Session http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=11926 18-20 February 2007, Salamanca, Spain International Association for Development of the Information Society Web Based Communities 2007 Conference http://www.webcommunities-conf.org 22 February 2007, Amsterdam, Netherlands The Future of Ambient Intelligence http://www.clubofamsterdam.com/event.asp?contentid=653 13-14 March 2007 Brussels, Belgium The EU RFID Forum 2007 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/rfid/conference2007_reg/index... en.htm 16 March 2007, Hannover, Germany European Commission conference on Mobile TV at CeBIT http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/cebit_07/index_en.htm 1-4 May 2007, Montreal, Canada 7th Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy (CFP2007) http://www.cfp2007.org/live/ 18-19 May 2007, Brasov, Romania eLiberatica - The Benefits of Open and Free Technologies - Romanian IT Open Source and Free Software Conference http://www.eliberatica.ro/ ============================================================ 13. About ============================================================ EDRI-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe. Currently EDRI has 25 members from 16 European countries. 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 2.0 License. See the full text at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Newsletter editor: Bogdan Manolea <edrigram@edri.org> Information about EDRI and its members: http://www.edri.org/ - 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 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]