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Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) wants privacy and data protection requirements to be considered in the future EU research and technological development (RTD) projects, especially those developing information and communication technologies.

The EDPS' main role is to monitor EU developments which have an impact on the protection of personal data, especially the development of ICT and "to advise the Commission and/or project developers on their efforts to use privacy and data protection-friendly RTD methodologies and of course to develop technologies and processes that will promote and reinforce the effectiveness of the EU data protection legal framework".

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The personal data of about 10 000 customers of the Bank of Ireland (BOI) are now in the possession of thieves as four laptops with the unencrypted data were stolen from the bank between June and October 2007.

The four stolen laptops had been used by staff working for the bank's life assurance division. Not only the customers' data including medical history, life assurance details, bank account details, names and addresses were not encrypted, but the bank notified the thefts to the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland only on 18 April 2008. Furthermore, until now the bank has not written to individual customers whose information was lost.

The case is now investigated by the Financial Regulator as well as by Billy

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To the unpleasant surprise of many Italians, for a few hours on 30 April 2008, the Italian government, through its Agenzia delle Entrate, published on the agency website, agenziaentrate.gov.it, the financial information filed by all Italian taxpayers.

Although operational only for a few hours, many people had the opportunity of seeing how much other people were earning, including celebrities. As Corriere della Sera daily newspaper puts it, the site was "a delicious opportunity to find out with a click how much your neighbour or colleague or, for gossip fans, celebrities earn".

The present centre-left government made public every citizen's declared taxable income as part of a crackdown on tax evasion. The action brought

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--- Version corrected on 24.04.2008---

According to a couple of Eurobarometer surveys on data protection, issued by the European Commission on 17 April 2008, EU citizens have little faith in the security of data transmission on the Internet.

Two surveys were conducted by Gallup in January 2008, investigating the perceptions on data protection among EU citizens and data controllers respectively. The surveys involved about 27000 EU citizens and 5000 companies from all 27 member states.

The findings of the surveys show that 82% of European Internet users have little trust in personal data management on the Internet and 64% of EU citizens are concerned about data protection issues feeling that the

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The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has issued his opinion on the new draft text of the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications (ePrivacy Directive) as proposed by the European Commission.

One of the important changes supported by the EDPS with the new text is the creation of a mandatory security breach notification system. The system should require the Telecoms and ISPs to notify their customers when personal information has been lost. But Peter Hustinx wants to go further and asked for the system to apply not only to "providers of public electronic communication services in public networks but also to other actors, especially to providers of information society services which process

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Article 29 Working Party - Opinion on data protection issues related to search engines
http://www.cbpweb.nl/downloads_int/Opinie%20WP29%20zoekmachines.pdf

New issue of Surveillance and Society: Surveillance and Inequality
http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/journalv5i3.html

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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

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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

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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

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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