(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
The Federal German Constitutional Court issued a preliminary decision on 19 March 2008 in the case supported by 34 000 people against the German implementation of the data retention directive. The preliminary ruling has considered that parts of the act are unconstitutional pending review.
The decision does not prohibit the electronic communication companies to gather the data, but limits its use, explaining that the retained data can be transferred to law enforcement authorities only in cases of serious crimes and with a judicial warrant.
The data shall be made available only in prosecuting or judging serious crime cases when other evidences are not accessible or are not enough. At the same time the Government is obliged to send a report to the Constitutional Court by 1 September 2008 on the practical effects of the data retention and the implementation of the present preliminary ruling.
The German Working Group on Data Retention, the NGO that initiated this protest, expressed their satisfaction about the preliminary decision and remained optimistic about the final result: "This is but a preliminary ruling. The Constitutional Court is traditionally reserved with regard to preliminary rulings. We remain confident that in cooperation with over 30.000 other applicants, we will be able to stop the surveillance of telecommunications in the absence of reasonable suspicion", declared Werner Hülsmann, member of the Working Group.
The NGO also asked for the resignation of the responsible Minister of Justice, Brigitte Zypries. Patrick Breyer, member of the Working Group, explained the demand: "Mrs Zypries negotiated the data retention rules against the will of the German Parliament, agreed to an EU directive which lacks a legal basis and tried to impose data retention in Germany in violation of the clear jurisprudence of the Federal Constitutional Court. This intentional breach of our constitution disqualifies her as a Minister of Justice."
The German Constitutional Court will take a final decision on the case later this year, waiting also for the European Court of Justice's decision in the action started on 6 July 2006 - Ireland vs. Council of the European Union, European Parliament (Case C-301/06).
In the meantime, the Working Group gives recommendations on its homepage on how to circumvent data retention and asks citizens to take their deputies to task and ask them just how they intend to effectively prevent such violations of our constitutional rights in the future.
Press Release - German Constitutional Court on Data Retention case
(19.03.2008)
http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/en/press/bvg08-037.html
Germany's Top Court Curtails Disputed Data Storage Law (19.03.2008)
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3203058,00.html
Data retention in Germany partly suspended by Constitutional Court
(19.03.2008)
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/209/1/lang,en/
EDRI-gram: German constitutional challenge on Data Retention (12.03.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.5/germany-data-retention
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
The Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali) issued a press release on 13 March 2008, explaining that the private companies can't systematically monitor the activities of peer-to-peer (P2P) users that share files on the Internet, for the purpose of identifying and suing them.
The decision was taken on 28 February 2008 in the very controversial Peppermint case.
Peppermint is a German record label that has been using since 2007 the services of a Swiss company, Logistep, in order to gather IP addresses of Italian users that allegedly shared copyrighted files via peer-to-peer software.
The company asked an Italian judge to obtain the details on more than 3000 Italian users, to whom it had sent written warning letters via regular mail asking them to destroy the files they've downloaded or face the legal consequences. The consumers, represented by the consumer NGO Adiconsum, have won some cases in front of the Civil Rome Tribunal, when the judges denied Peppermint & Logistep to identify the users behind the IP addresses.
Adiconsum also complained to the Garante considering that this is a violation of privacy rights. Garante's decision from 28 February 2008 makes it clear that spying on the P2P users and collecting their IP addresses is an illegal activity, calling also as an argument the similar decision of the Swiss Data Protection Authority.
The Italian DPA notes that the activity is breaching the European Directive on privacy and electronic communications, violating the purpose principle because the P2P networks are ment to exchange data and files between users for personal purposes. Therefore, the usage of users' data for other purposes will be a law breach.
Consequently, the Garante has asked the companies that did the monitoring activities to destroy, until 31 March 2008, all the personal data of the users that exchanged files via P2P systems.
Internet: illegal spying on users who exchange music files and games(only in
Italian, 13.03.2008)
http://www.garanteprivacy.it/garante/doc.jsp?ID=1497236
Internet - Case Peppermint: illegal spying on users who exchange music files
and games (only in Italian, 28.02.2008)
http://www.garanteprivacy.it/garante/doc.jsp?ID=1495246
Peppermint, the Garante protects the P2P users (only in Italian 14.03.2008)
http://punto-informatico.it/p.aspx?i=2221923
Italian File-Sharers Let Off The Hook (17.03.2008)
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i4b1f1f7f2a0...
The Rome Civil Tribunal rejects the appeals presented by Peppermint and
Techland (only in Italian, 17.07.2007)
http://www.adiconsum.it/index.php?pagina=notizia&idarticolo=275&am...
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
A large controversy has been lately spurred in the UK by the new technology Phorm, which can track users' online surfing habits in order to better target ads.
The Phorm system is apparently meant to assign a unique identifying number to a user's browser, which, according to the developing company, cannot be associated with the user's IP address, not even the ISP. Then, it uses information on the user's surfing habits obtained by searching for key words on the requested URLs and visited websites and assigns that unique number to various "channels". When a website with a "Phorm please put an ad in here" tag is visited, Phorm provides an ad from a channel where the user's unique number appears. It appears that some ISPs like BT, Talk Talk and Virgin have signed up to use Phorm.
Several technical questions have been raised. The EDRI-member Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) letter says: "Users are apparently to be allocated pseudonyms for some of the processing, but at various processing stages the personal data can be linked to the pseudonym, the pseudonym can be linked to the IP address used, and the IP address can be linked to the user. Although we understand that this linkage will not be standard operating practice, it can nevertheless be performed."
Phorm assures that it does not write in "the production system" the data on the content viewed, getting rid of this information as soon as the assigning of the unique number to a channel is complete. The data is stored for 14 days in a separate system used for "research and debugging" and then deleted.
Concerns were also related to the legality of the system. It is not yet clear whether the use of Phorm by ISPs is in compliance with the Data Protection Act. In the opinion of the FIPR, Phorm is illegal according to UK law and the Foundation has sent an open letter in this sense to the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas claiming Phorm contravenes the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), which protects users from unlawful interception of information.
The UK Home Office has drawn up guidance suggesting that ISPs will conform with the law if customers have given consent. FIPR argues that Phorm must not only ask the consent of web users but also of website operators. Nicholas Bohm, general counsel at FIPR, said: "The need for both parties to consent to interception in order for it to be lawful is an extremely basic principle within the legislation, and it cannot be lightly ignored or treated as a technicality."
But a spokesman for BT told BBC News: "Provided the customer has consented, we consider that there will generally be an implied consent from website owners". Ertugrul, chief executive of Phorm Kent, stated: "With regards to a website that is published openly and fairly, we are not breaching any laws in using information that is published on it" . He also added that websites which discouraged web crawling from search engines would not be subject to Phorm's tools.
In its open letter FIPR pointed out that many websites required registration giving access to their content only to some people adding that many websites or part of websites belonged to an "unconnected web" with a limited number of people.
But Phorm has argued that its system gave users more privacy because of an opt out possibility. "Phorm has an on-off switch and does not store any personal data at all," said Mr Ertugrul.
One of the opponents of Phorm is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of World Wide Web who stated he did not want his ISP to track which websites he visited. "I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that's not going to get to my insurance company and I'm going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they've figured I'm looking at those books," he said.
Phorm has said its system offers security benefits warning users about potential phishing sites.
A petition submitted by Mark Antony Thompson addressed to the Prime Minister to "stop ISP's from breaching customers privacy via advertising technologies" has gathered more than 8500 signatures. The petition considers "the opt out system for this technology is vague and unproven, even when opting out your every move on the Internet might be recorded. Surely this must be a breach of privacy laws, if not then the privacy laws need to be changed to cover such invasive technology."
Foundation for information policy research - Open Letter to the Information
Commissioner (17.03.2008)
http://www.fipr.org/080317icoletter.html
Phorm 'illegal' says policy group (17.03.2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7301379.stm
The Phorm storm (12.03.2008)
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/03/12/the-phorm-storm/
Web creator rejects net tracking (17.03.2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7299875.stm
Petition to the Prime Minister to Stop ISP's from breaching customers
privacy via advertising technologies
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
Czech Republic Interior Minister Ivan Langer and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff signed on 26 February 2008 in Washington D.C. the Memorandum of Understanding which is the first step in introducing new electronic visa programme for all EU countries.
In this Memorandum Czech authorities agreed to "passenger and other information sharing, screening information concerning known or suspected terrorists, information to combat terrorism and serious crime, and information on migration matters" with the US authorities and also promised to "allow for the further dissemination of transferred information within the United States Government". Czech Ministry of Interior agreed "to provide identifying information that includes biographic and biometric data, to be used in determining whether persons who intend to travel to the United States represent a threat to the security, law enforcement, and immigration interests of the United States."
The signed document represents a shift in the Czech Republic stance on PNR Agreement between EU and USA. The government of the Czech Republic approved the PNR Agreement last summer, but the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared its reservations regarding the parliamentary ratification and necessity to uphold European data protection standarts. However, in the new Memorandum of Understanding with the USA, the Czech Ministry of Interior declares its intention "to collect, analyze, use, and share Advance Passenger Information (API)" and "to collect, analyze, use, and share Passenger Name Record (PNR)".
The document was adopted by the Czech Government within the month after the U.S. Homeland Security Department senior representative Richard Barth visited the Czech Republic to have a series of talks on the matter. The Memorandum of Understanding was not sent for comments to the Czech Data Protection Authority nor to the Ministry for Human Rights. It was subject to strong criticism from the European Commission which has insisted that EU member states should proceed jointly to the debates on visa policy and that bilateral agreements were not a correct solution. The European Commission spokesman even said that the Commission had reserved itself the right to take possible legal steps against Prague. The Agreement was also strongly criticised by EDRi-member Iuridicum Remedium and some representatives of the opposition parties in the Czech Parliament.
The Memorandum of Understanding refers to the new American Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) system, the details of which are still unclear and, according to the Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, the amount of data to be provided to that system, as well as the entire procedure, will be subject to further negotiations in the coming months.
Following the Czech Republic stance on the Memorandum of Understanding with the USA, a similar bilateral document has been signed so far by other five new EU member countries - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Slovakia.
Barrot to negotiate U.S. visas with Czechs instead of Frattini (only in
Czech, 18.03.2008)
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/vyhledavani/index_view.php?id=302885
Czechs view themselves victorious over EC in U.S. visa issues (only in
Czech, 14.03.2008)
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/vyhledavani/index_view.php?id=302076
Czech leftist opposition criticises Czech-U.S. memorandum (only in Czech,
27.02.2008)
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/vyhledavani/index_view.php?id=299167
Czech, U.S. ministers sign memorandum on visas (only in Czech, 26.02.2008)
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/vyhledavani/index_view.php?id=298991
(contribution by Filip PospÃsil - EDRi-member Iuridicum Remedium - Czech Republic)
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
Mr. Richard Thomas, UK Information Commissioner warned Heathrow airport operator BAA that the plans to fingerprint all passengers at the new Terminal 5 may breach the UK Data Protection Act.
The 5.5 billion euro worth Terminal 5 was opened by the Queen on 16 March and is due to receive its first passengers on 27 March 2008. The airport plans to apply security measures that involve fingerprinting all passengers including domestic ones claiming fingerprinting was necessary so that all passengers could mix freely in Terminal 5 shopping mall area. Fingerprinting is already being applied for domestic passengers at Terminal 1. The passengers place a hand on a scanner which records four fingerprints and face a camera which takes their photograph.
The airport has issued leaflets saying: "To ensure we maintain the highest levels of border security, we are required to introduce additional controls for passengers travelling to UK destinations. For this reason, we will capture the photo and fingerprints of passengers. Only passengers who comply with these additional controls will be able to fly to UK destinations."
Following a complaint made by Privacy International on 9 March 2008, the Information Commissioner has launched an investigation to verify whether the airport "took account of the data protection implications of its proposal".
The complaint said that "compulsory fingerprinting...will substantially violate UK Data Protection law". In Privacy International's opinion, the reason for these measures is rather commercial as BAA wants to have more passengers spending money in the duty free shops. "To diminish privacy rights in order to achieve greater sales revenue is a disquieting development" says the document. On the airport's website one can read: "We're transforming Heathrow to make big improvements for all passengers. Domestic passengers will in future use the same departure lounges as international passengers. That means all our passengers will enjoy the same wide choice of shops and restaurants".
The Office of the Information Commissioner contacted BAA demanding evidence that it was acting lawfully and although BAA stated the measures had been required by the Government, the Home Office denied the statement.
A spokesman for BAA explained to The Times newspaper that the system is compliant with the UK law: "We are confident that there is no breach of the Data Protection Act and nor do these measures affect the fundamental rights of our passengers, principally because we encrypt all data immediately and destroy it within 24 hours."
In Privacy International's opinion the security actions planned by the airport are "unnecessary, intrusive and disproportionate". David Smith, the Deputy Information Commissioner, said: "We want to know why Heathrow needs to fingerprint passengers at all. Taking photographs is less intrusive. So far we have not heard BAA's case for requesting fingerprints. If we find there is a breach of data protection legislation, we would hope to persuade them to put things right. If that is not successful we can issue an enforcement notice. If they don't comply, it is then a criminal offence and they can be prosecuted. (...) Unless Heathrow provides evidence that the move is necessary, the Commissioner has the power to order it to stop fingerprinting passengers or face legal action".
The Office of the Information Commissioner has advised passengers that such a scheme would normally be considered "intrusive" and that they should have their fingerprints taken "under protest".
Terminal Five chaos threat over fingerprint plan: Commissioner tells
passengers to protest at security measures (23.03.2008)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_artic...
Privacy International complaint poised to shut down Heathrow passenger
fingerprinting (22.03.2008)
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd³³0³=x-347-561079
How to deal with the Heathrow fingerprint system (23.03.2008)
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd³³0³=x-347-561080
Privacy watchdog warns on Heathrow fingerprint system (26.03.2008)
http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=8974
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
Although initially the Swedish Government promised not to hunt down young people for filesharing, on 14 March 2008, it made a proposal that will allow courts to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to give up IP addresses used for illegal filesharing to the owners of the fileshared material.
The government's present proposal means the rejection of the previous alternative proposed by Appeals Court judge Cecilia Renfors who was suggesting ISPs should shut down users who repeatedly downloaded copyrighted material without permission.
ISPs welcomed the government decision considering that Renfors' proposal would have put the providers "in a position of having to police our own customers" as said Marcus Nylén, Bredbandsbolaget's CEO. Martin Tivéus, head of ISP Glocalnet also stated: "It is important that the new copyright laws will take into account users' rightful interest in their own personal integrity. (...) Neither we as a provider nor the Anti-Piracy Agency can or should make a decision as to when copyright is more important than personal integrity. For this reason it feels good that the government will hand this task to the courts."
Pirate Party and Pirate Bay had a totally different reaction. "This is a declaration of war on an entire generation of young voters," said Rickard Falkvinge, Pirate Party leader, who also said that the government should take filesharing as a" techno-historical fact". Peter Sunde from Pirate Bay described the move as "completely the wrong way to go and an affront to personal integrity".
According to Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask and Minister of Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, the government was not united in the decision but even the parties that were reluctant to the proposal accepted to compromise on the matter. One of those was the Central Party which had previously stated it would not support any policy leading to the release of IP addresses to the court. "It's not possible to get things 100 percent your own way in negotiations. It was with a degree of regret that we agreed to go along with this," said the party's spokeswoman Annie Johansson.
The ministers pointed out however that in order for the ISP to reveal an IP address, the rights owners must be able to prove that the respective Internet service subscription has been used for illegal filesharing.
Sweden to clamp down on file sharing (14.03.2008)
http://www.thelocal.se/10474/20080314/
A declaration of war on Sweden's youth (14.03.2008)
http://www.thelocal.se/10492/20080314/
EDRi-gram: Sweden wants tougher laws against file sharers (18.07.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.14/sweden-file-sharing
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
On 18 March 2008, Peter Neyroud, the chief executive of the UK National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA), told the Commons Home Affairs Committee, during the final evidence session of a year-long inquiry on the surveillance society, that the police was developing a national database of mugshots to be used with face recognition technology that would match CCTV images with offenders.
A pilot system has started with three local police forces that have gathered during the last 18 months a database including more than 750 000 face images. About 7.7 million euro has been allocated so far on developing the technology that will be nationally launched in 2009.
Neyroud stated that he hoped to have the beat police equipped with advanced personal organizers by 2012 London Olympics. The systems will allow them to access local CCTV cameras, take and transmit fingerprints and download mugshots and other details such as scars or tattoos from the police national computer system.
The police are also developing a "behavioural matching" software using CCTV images in order to trace odd behaviours in a crowd. Neyroud stated that it will be useful in dealing with street crime and terrorism. He also stated: "The proliferation of CCTV cameras in the UK - with about one for every 14 people - means that we are now accustomed to our movements being monitored in this way and for most people this is not an issue."
On the same occasion, Tony McNulty, the Home Office Minister told the committee that he opposed the extension of UK DNA database to "non-recordable" crimes as some police chiefs have asked for fingerprints taken from minor offenders (such as those dropping litter for instance) to be introduced into the database. McNulty considered that the present system, which includes details of about 4 million people having been arrested but not necessarily charged, provided a correct balance between security issues and human rights. Also, in his opinion, the fears of a surveillance big brother type of society were overrated. "The idea of big brother or big sister sitting on everybody's shoulder makes great copy for the newspapers but it is simply not the case" he stated.
Police trying out national database with 750,000 mugshots, MPs told
(19.03.2008)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/mar/19/ukcrime.humanrights
Police on beat look for database access(19.03.2008)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/389f0c24-f556-11dc-a21b-000077b07658.html?nc...
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
Sony BMG has been accused by PointDev company of having used Ideal Migration, the administration software for Windows servers and client accounts, without having a licence.
On 22 January 2008, a bailiff mandated by PointDev found an illegal installation of the software on four computers belonging to Sony BMG. Paul-Henry Agustoni, owner and administrator of the editor claims 300 000 euro damages from Sony BMG.
The case started in November 2007 when a Sony employee requested online technical support from PointDev. Ideal Migration, like all the other products of the company is proposed on the Internet in a trial version. Following the purchase of the product, the client is provided with a key allowing the use of additional services including online technical support. The account of the Sony employee was not registered and after some researches, PointDev found that the key used to activate the software was pirated and dated since the end of 2004, the moment BMG was absorbed by Sony. Ideal Migration is particularly used by companies for IT consolidation to allow a centralised administration of servers and client accounts.
Paul- Henry Agustoni believed this was not an isolated situation. "I believe the pirating is related to the company policy. If the employee has the necessary budget to buy the software he (she) needs, he (she) will do it. If that's not the case, he (she) will find alternative means, because work has to be done one way or another" he stated.
Sony BMG has not yet made any comments on the matter.
Sony BMG searched for software counterfeit (only in French, 21.03.2008)
http://www.01net.com/editorial/374727/la-major-sony-bmg-poursuivie-pou...
A company from Vaucluse attacks the giant Sony (only in French, 19.03.2008)
http://www.laprovence.com/articles/2008/03/19/347901-UNKNOWN-Une-socie...
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
The European Commission announced it would increase its own use of open source software for ICT projects: "For all new development, where deployment and usage is foreseen by parties outside of the Commission Infrastructure, Open Source Software will be the preferred development and deployment platform."
Valerie Rampie, spokesperson of Siim Kallas, the European commissioner on administrative affairs, declared for the IDABC open source observatory that the publication of the strategy is made "mainly for information purposes".
The new strategy paper of the Commission, that has been a supporter of open source software since 2000, explains that open-source software should be pursued provided it does not cost more and is in the best interest of European citizens.
The Commission decided that "for all future IT developments and procurement procedures, the Commission shall promote the use of products that support open, well-documented standards. Interoperability is a critical issue for the Commission, and usage of well-established open standards is a key factor to achieve and endorse it."
According to the Bloomberg News, the decision could be seen as a potential setback for Microsoft that "is trying to prevent an increasing number of defections by governments from its proprietary software toward software from open-source developers, who are allowed to modify the software source code, or underlying instructions."
But the open-source developers are more than happy with the result : "There is a growing pressure on the commission to promote open-source software," explained Carlo Piana, a lawyer for the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).
FSFE is also trying to convince other EU bodies to adopt open source software and open formats. In a public petition launched at the beginning of March 2008, FSFE has asked the European Parliament to practice what it preaches and to change its ICT system in order to allow the adoption of open standards.
EU: European Commission to increase its use of Open Source(11.03.2008)
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7403/469
EDRi-gram: European Parliament criticized for not using open standards
(12.03.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.5/ep-open-standards
EU to consider buying open-source software (5.03.2008)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/05/business/open.php
Open Source Software within the European Commission - a co-ordinated
strategy
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7389/5998
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
On 21 March 2008, Paris was the host of the French Big Brother awards ceremony for the year 2007.
For the second time President Nicolas Sarkozy was excluded from the competition on grounds of "genetic predisposition" for attacks to personal life and freedoms. The jury has reached the conclusion that Mr. Sarkozy's problem must be of genetic source and therefore he should be considered legally "irresponsible" of his repeated acts against private life and fundamental freedoms.
The Constitutional Council received the State award for having validated a new Sarkozy law on "safety imprisonment" which allows for imprisonment of people considered dangerous by experts and not judges. A special mention was received by Professor Philip Gorwood of Inserm for a study collecting DNA of young students in search of genetics and behavioural links and for having used doubtful techniques to obtain from the students confidential information on their parents.
The award for companies was won by Taser France and Elsa for the drone prototypes Quadri France, surveillance pieces of equipment, initially developed for the army, used now for the surveillance of the population especially in the cities suburbs.
Claude Journès, as president of the Lyon II University and teacher of political sciences was awarded the locality price for treating students as surveillance technologies' guinea pigs.
The Novlang award was given to the TV show "Envoyé Special", aired on the State-funded France 2 channel, for agreeing to carry out an "embedded report", simply entitled "Expulsion manual," inside the Immigration police of the French government. This complacent report painted illegal immigrants as cheaters and liars, presented "retention centers" (special jails that retain people prior to their expulsions) as nice places, and thus gave a justification of the French government policy establishing quotas of people being ousted from France. The police chief and the State prosecutor of the Var district (South of France) arrived second, for their project to open an e-mail adress aimed at collecting anonymous complaints, considered as a call to public "tattling".
Google has received the award for the lifetime menace for placing its users from the whole world under surveillance.
The Voltaire positive award was received by the team Refus ADN made of a group of people who refuse to be taken a DNA sample on simple "suspect" grounds.
2007 Big Brother Awards France (only in French, 21.03.2008)
http://bigbrotherawards.eu.org/Palmares-2007-des-Big-Brother-Awards-Fr...
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
EDPS Opinion on biometrics in passports: exemptions welcomed but unsatisfactory
The EDPS welcomes the introduction of exemptions from giving fingerprints based on the age of the person or his/her inability to provide fingerprints. These exemptions are part of the fallback procedures that should be implemented. However, the EDPS still considers these exemptions as insufficient to remedy the imperfections of biometrics, such as the impact of misidentification or failure to enrol.
Peter Hustinx, EDPS, says: "The fact that the Commission took into account
the need for fallback procedures, stated in previous opinions, is more than
welcomed. These exemptions are however still unsatisfactory. They fail to
address all the possible and relevant issues triggered by the inherent
imperfections of biometric systems, and more specifically those related to
children and elderly."
http://edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/Cons...
Privacy chief says biometric concessions not good enough (26.03.2008)
http://www.out-law.com/page-8977
(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)
31 March 2008 Vilnius, Lithuania
Ethical Public Domain: Debate of Questionable Practices - Second COMMUNIA
workshop
http://www.communia-project.eu/ws02
31 March - 2 April 2008, Bled, Slovenia
The Future of the Internet
http://www.fi-bled.eu/
2-4 April 2008, Berlin, Germany
re:publica - The Critical Mass
http://www.re-publica.de
8 April 2008, Milan, Italy
Italian Biotech Law Conference - Gen-Ethics and BioBanks: between market and
law enforcement profiling
http://www.iblc.net/english.php
10-12 April 2008, Amsterdam & Hilversum, Netherlands
Economies of the Commons - Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative
Reuse of Images and Sounds Online
International Working Conference
http://www.ecommons.eu
12 April 2008, Rijeka, Croatia
International seminar on digital evidence
http://law.pravri.hr/hr/digital-evidence-seminar.pdf
28-29 April 2008, Vienna, Austria
PRISE Final Conference -Towards privacy enhancing security technologies -
the next steps
http://www.prise.oeaw.ac.at/conference.htm
9-10 May 2008, Florence, Italy
"Digital communities and data retention"
Deadline for papers submission is 31 March 2008
http://e-privacy.winstonsmith.info/
15-17 May 2008, Ljubljana, Slovenia
EURAM Conference 2008 - Track "Creating Value Through Digital Commons"
How collective management of IPRs, open innovation models, and digital
communities shape the industrial dynamics in the XXI century.
http://www.euram2008.org
20-23 May 2008, New Haven, CT, USA
18th Annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference
http://cfp2008.org/
30-31 May 2008, Bucharest, Romania
eLiberatica 2008 - The benefits of Open and Free Technologies
http://www.eliberatica.ro/2008/
6-7 June 2008, Bremen, Germany
IdentityCamp - a barcamp around identity 2.0 and privacy 2.0
http://barcamp.org/IdentityCampBremen
17-18 June 2008, Seoul, Korea
The Future of the Internet Economy - OECD Ministerial Meeting
http://www.oecd.org/FutureInternet
23 June 2008, Paris, France
GigaNet is organizing an international academic workshop on "Global Internet
Governance: An Interdisciplinary Research Field in Construction".
http://tinyurl.com/3y9ld8
26-27 June 2008, London, UK
International Conference on Digital Evidence
http://www.mistieurope.com/default.asp?Page=65&Return=70&Produ...
30 June - 1 July 2008, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
First COMMUNIA Conference - Assessment of economic and social impact of
digital public domain throughout Europe
http://www.communia-project.eu/conf2008
23-25 July 2008, Leuven, Belgium
The 8th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2008)
http://petsymposium.org/2008/
19-20 July 2008, Stockholm, Sweden
International Association for Media and Communication Research
pre-conference - Civil Rights in Mediatized Societies: Which data privacy
against whom and how ?
Deadline for papers submission is 1 April 2008
http://www.iamcr.org/content/view/301/1/
8-10 September 2008, Geneva, Switzerland
The third annual Access to Knowledge Conference (A2K3)
http://isp.law.yale.edu/