Act Now to Protect Freedom of Expression Online:
- Sign up in support to this EDRI statement (NGOs and groups from non CoE member States also welcome)

On October 10, 2007, EDRI issued a statement to express its serious concerns over a new Council of Europe Recommendation on 'promoting freedom of expression and information in the new information and communications
environment'.

As other related instruments are currently in preparation by the CoE, EDRI calls for NGOs and groups from all over the world to sign up in support of EDRI statement and take further action to help avoid the risk of more damages to freedom of expression and information in the online world.

Read EDRI Statement and Act Now to Protect Freedom of Expression Online:
- EDRI Statement: 'New Council of Europe Recommendation fails to uphold online
freedom of expression' (PDF). Also available in the following languages: Čeština, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, Македонски

The campaign for support for EDRI-gram has been very successful. After an urgency call for pledges in the last 2005 issue of EDRI-gram, kind donators have pledged a little over 2.000 euro in support. On top of that, the Open Society Institute (Soros) kindly offered a donation of 1.500 euro. Combined with the 4.000 euro scraped together by EDRI itself, EDRI is pleased to announce the survival of EDRI-gram in 2006. The new editor, Bogdan Manolea from EDRI-member APTI in Romania, has agreed to produce 24 editions in 2006.

After 5 years of fighting against plans for mandatary data retention, EDRI is deeply disappointed that a majority in the European Parliament has adopted a law decreeing very broad and long retention of telephony and internet traffic data, with access granted for all sorts of undefined crimes. Please visit the special Campaign WIKI for all details and relevant documents.

The EDRI and XS4ALL petition against data retention is closed and has been offered to Jean Marie Cavada, the chairman of the Europarliament committee on civil liberties and Alexander Alvaro, the Europarl rapporteur on data retention.

The petition has attracted over 58.000 signatures, of which over 21.000 from the Netherlands (where the campaign was launched), almost 7.000 from Germany and almost 6.000 from Finland.

All previous EDRI-gram articles about data retention http://www.edri.org/issues/privacy/dataretention

European Digital Rights is kindly inviting all interested people to attend a special public pre-event to the annual DPA conference in Montreux, Switzerland on 13 September 2005. EDRI, together with other NGO's defending digital civil rights, is organising two panels, on biometrics and on data retention.

Strategies for International Privacy Protection
=Issues, Actors, and Future cooperation=

Time and place: Tuesday 13 September 2005, 14:30-18:00, in the Montreux Conference Center, Grand-rue 95, CH-1820 Montreux, Switzerland

EDRI press release
Tuesday 12 July, 13.00 PM

European Digital Rights and Privacy International have sent an urgent letter today to the UK Presidency and the European Commissioners for Justice and Media to show restraint in tomorrow's extraordinary JHA Council. EDRI expects the UK Presidency to table a new urgent procedure for the proposal on telecommunication data retention, bypassing the European Commission and the European Parliament.

On 7 June 2005 the European Parliament has adopted the report of LIBE-rapporteur Alexander Alvaro with a large majority. The report finds the proposal for mandatory data retention disproportionate. The report also questions the necessity, effectiveness and high costs for industry and telecommunication users.
The JHA Council immediately explained to the MEPs that their advice will be ignored. The Council refuses to withdraw the draft framework decision and will continue to work on it.

The Open Letter to the European Parliament on data retention from EDRI, Privacy International and Statewatch is now available in 4 languages.

The Open Letter in English

Lettre Ouverte Version Française

Offener Brief auf Deutsch

Carta abierta en Espanol