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EDRi-gram
biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe
Number 8.12, 16 June 2010
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Contents
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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
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1. New SWIFT Agreement as Bad as the Rejected One
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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-final-2.pdf
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.pdf
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)
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2. Digital Agenda Commissioner Kroes publicly supporting open standards
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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-news-495153
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-declaration
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3. Turkey extends the censorship of YouTube
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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.html
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.html
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
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4. Possible solutions for remunerating content creators in the digital era
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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-debate-on-eu-culture-and-copyright/
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5. Macedonia: Civil society calls for the respect of privacy
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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-graganite-vo-republika-makedonija.html
EDRi-gram: Macedonia: New Law on Electronic Communications Proposed
(19.05.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.10/macedonia-new-law-electronic-communications
(Contribution by EDRi-member Metamorphosis Foundation - Macedonia)
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6. Copyright and cultural diversity
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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/esstudyunescoconvention/esstudyunescoconventionen.pdf
(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)
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7. MEPs debating Human Rights for Internet users
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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/039-75595-158-06-24-906-20100607STO75582-2010-07-06-2010/default_en.htm
Presentations from the event (2.06.2010)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/organes/droi/droi_20100602_1500.htm
Subcommittee on Human Rights (2.06.2010)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/homeCom.do?language=en&body=DROI
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8. French journalist facing jail for online releasing of a clip on Sarkozy
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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.html
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-jail-leaking-embarrassing-air-video-clip-Nicolas-Sarkozy-TV-interview.html
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9. ENDitorial: New coalition's U-turn on privacy in UK
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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-10aug09
Liberal Democrats' health policy (26.01.2010)
http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/general_election_2010/party_policies/liberal_democrats.html
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-call
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-enforcement_042010_en.pdf
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
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