The Industry Committee (ITRE) of the European Parliament today adopted a disastrously badly drafted Opinion on data protection. The effect of the adopted text would be to effectively rip up decades of privacy legislation in Europe, undermining trust and confidence – to the detriment of both citizens and business.

"There are positives to be drawn out of this result," said Joe McNamee, Executive Director of EDRi. "The majority was not huge and the number of bad amendments was reduced over the past few days, in order to scrape this majority together.

• Copyright: challenges of the digital era
• Most Internet users would use DNT settings if easily available
• US privacy groups believe US officials lobby to weaken EU privacy
• Dutch government maintains private copying-exception for downloading
• Denmark: Government postpones the data retention law evaluation
• Ancillary copyright law under discussion in Germany
• Human rights orgs ask OECD to investigate surveillance companies
• Big Brother Awards 2013 Bulgaria
• ENDitorial: Licences for Europe and fight club... only one rule
• Recommended Action: support your privacy rights
• Recommended Reading
• Agenda

From Wired to the New York Times, every news platform has been reporting about the massive lobbying efforts against the data protection reform over the past few months. Vice-President of the EU Commission Viviane Reding has stated in the Telegraph that the proposed rules were subject to the most aggressive lobbying she has ever witnessed.

Thirty six civil rights and data protection organsations have just launched the European campaign portal www.privacycampaign.eu in support of better protection for European citizens' rights to privacy and data protection.

“This is our one opportunity to develop a strong legal framework, building trust and removing unnecessary red tape for business. We need a framework that is guided by clear, predictable legal principles and strong enforcement. Instead, we have an unprecedented wave of ill-informed, ill-advised and destructive corporate lobbying.

Following the recent vote, the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) of the European Parliament has just published a final version of its “Opinion” (pdf) on the European Commission's proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation. The text was adopted with a small majority, underlining how controversial the dossier is.

While the Committee proposes leaving a few of the Commission's proposals untouched, the text shows the extent to which industry lobbying risks completely destroying the fundamental right to privacy and data protection.

After a year of working group meetings, the “CEO Coalition to make the Internet a better place for kids” produces its final documents on 4 February. The outcome of the project is a set of voluntary guidelines divided into five broad headings, ranging from “reporting tools” to “notice and takedown,” It is intended that this will be followed up by a meeting, in about six months, between Commissioner Kroes and the CEOs of the companies responsible. The meeting is designed to put pressure on the CEOs to fully implement the “voluntary” measures.

• An introduction to Data Protection
• EU governments keep increasing requests to Google for private data
• Finnish copyright law might be changed following crowdsourcing support
• German government intends to use FinFisher Spyware
• Slovenia has a net neutrality law
• Greater transparency and accountability of surveillance systems
• Kroes ignoring the problems on net neutrality?
• Recommended Action
• Recommended Reading
• Agenda

This is hopefully going to be our last report on the EU-funded Clean IT project. Since our last article, which was the trigger for quite some negative feedback in the international press, much has changed in the drafting documents of the project. On Wednesday 30 January, the participants meet for a final conference in Brussels in order to approve a final report (pdf) containing a list of recommendations (and lots and lots of white space).

Re-cap

What happened so far? In 2010, But Klaasen, from Dutch law enforcement, submitted a project proposal to the European Commission.