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Deutsch: Russland ratifiziert die Datenschutz-Konvention 108 des Europarats

The Russian Federation strengthened its commitment to the protection of personal data by ratifying, on 15 May 2013, the Council of Europe (CoE) Convention for the protection of individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data, also known as “Convention 108”.

Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland received Russia´s instrument of accession from Alexander Alekseev, the Permanent Representative and Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Council of Europe.

The Conventi

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Deutsch: WCIT: Was passiert ist und was es für das Internet bedeutet

After two weeks of intensive negotiations, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) adopted the revised International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), a controversial treaty, which has been viewed by many as an attempt by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and Member States to take over the Internet.

The conference has been hailed as a success by the ITU with 89 Member States signing the treaty.

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Deutsch: Datenschutz als globale Herausforderung

With more than 100 on-site participants and almost 4000 remote attendees through the live webcast, the 2012 Public Voice Conference was, this year again, a full success.

On Monday of next week (29 October, 2012), the European Union and the United States will have a “summit” (draft agenda) on “Exchange of Best Practices for Child Protection Online”. In the course of that meeting, the question of measures to prevent “re-uploading of the content” will be discussed. Both the European Commission and the United States appear to think that widespread, suspicionless upload filtering is “best practice”.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Der WCIT-Vorschlag der ETNO ist nicht so schlimm wie manch...

Many people have criticised the ETNO's proposals for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), arguing that these would significantly damage net neutrality. These criticisms are not entirely correct – because ETNO's proposals are far worse. ETNO's proposals would squeeze every ounce of innovation and competition out of global Internet networks.

There has lately been controversy over proposals made by several countries, such as Russia and China, to give more control over the Internet to the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Key functions of the internet as naming, numbering, addressing and identification are now carried out by ICANN, based in the US independent IANA, and national and regional agencies. Presently, ITU has some managing powers of the internet, such as promoting IPv6 awareness and coordinating international cybersecurity efforts. ITU’s international telecommunications regulations (ITRS), a treaty dating since 1988 (therefore before the existence of the web) are now under discussions to be revised and therefore, several parties have made proposals for the revision of the regulations.

An ICANN meeting will be held in Prague between 24-29 June 2012, where issues and topics impacting users, consumers and registrants, like whois access and the extension of domain space with ongoing new gTLD program, will be discussed. As a reminder, ICANN is an Internet governing body managing mainly IP addressing and domain names and which is implementing a multi-stakeholder model, bottom-up and consensus-based policy-making process .

ICANN as an organization still needs important improvements on accountability, transparency and public interest aspects and also in the involvement of the civil society, activists and academics.

With the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) to take place during 3-14 December 2012 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and the World Summit on the Information Society Forum (WSIS) 2012 having taken place in Geneva between 14-18 May 2012, a large group of human rights advocates, freedom of expression groups, academics and organisations of the civil society all over the world, including EDRi, drafted a letter raising several concerns related to the preparation process.

The letter of 17 May 2012, addressed to WCIT organiser, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Council Working Group to Prepare for the WCIT-12 and to ITU member states, is asking for more transparency and expresses the wish of the signatories to participate in the preparation p