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Deutsch: Einstweilige technische Aufsicht für EU-US SWIFT Abkommen

As on 1 August 2010 the so-called Swift agreement allowing EU citizens' bank data to be transferred to US is to come into force, the European Commission will appoint an interim "technical" supervisor to oversee the searches of US authorities on European bank transactions as part of anti-terrorist investigations.

After having initially rejected the agreement in February 2010, the European Parliament accepted it in July 2010, imposing the appointment of an EU supervisor who will be able to block part or all the searches conducted by US authorities that go beyond the scope of the agreement, such as random searche

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Deutsch: Rumänische Regierung plant elektronische ID-Karten

The Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs and Public Administration (MAI) submitted for public consultation, in the middle of August 2010, a new draft Ordinance for issuing mandatory electronic ID cards for Romanians starting with 1 January 2011.

Even though the decision of having an electronic ID card was taken in 2002 by Ordinance 69/29.08.2002, the practical implementation has been postponed several times since then, due to financial difficulties.

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Deutsch: EU-Bürger gegen Google Street View

While Google intends to go on mapping localities in Europe through its Street View system, several EU countries continue to show reluctance to this service due to privacy issues.

In May 2010, Google was faced with big concerns in Germany after it had been revealed that Street View vehicles were collecting private data sent over Wi-Fi networks.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Beschwerde gegen französische Biometrie-Pässe nach 2 Jah...

It took more than two years after the complaint against the French biometric passport was filed to have the conclusions of the "public rapporteur" publicly presented at the Conseil d'Etat (French highest administrative Court), on 30 June 2010.

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Deutsch: Yahoo muss belgischen Behörden keine personenbezogenen Daten übergeb...

The Belgian Court of Appeal of Gand ruled on 30 June 2010 that Yahoo was not obliged to hand over personal data of its users to the Belgian authorities, in a case where the first instance had issued a contrary ruling.

In 2009, following a cybercrime investigation by the Belgian police, it was discovered that a group was using Yahoo e-mail addresses to commit online fraud. The members of the group stole data from various companies and used the data to order goods without paying.

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Deutsch: Auf Facebook warten in Deutschland hohe Geldstrafen

The Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information John Caspar has launched legal proceedings against the operator of the social network Facebook for illegally accessing and saving personal data of people who don't use the respective social networking site.

"We consider the saving of data from third parties, in this context, to be against personal data laws," said Caspar.

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Deutsch: Europäisches Parlament stimmt SWIFT-Abkommen zu

The European Parliament has adopted the so-called SWIFT agreement on 8 July 2010 allowing sharing EU citizens' bank data with the US authorities, but failing to stick to its initial position on privacy safeguards from February 2010.

The text was adopted with 484 votes in favour and 109 against. The supporters of the current version claim that the new text was significantly improved by gaining a number of important concessions from the US.

European Digital Rights has prepared a "frequently asked questions" document to explain the changes between the SWIFT agreement previously rejected by the European Parliament and the current text under discussion.