Search
Content type: News & Analysis
We, and other privacy advocates, havecriticised the poor provisions of the so-called Safe Harbour agreement, which allows free transfers of personal information from European countries to companies in the United States that have signed up and promise to abide by its Principles. Now the European Commission, prompted by the recent mass surveillance scandals, has published an investigation into this agreement which provides overwhelming evidence that it is not fit for purpose. It…
Content type: News & Analysis
The European Parliament Committee that deals with civil liberties and justice issues will have a first vote this week on the revised European data protection framework after months and months of deliberations and negotiations over more than 4,000 amendments. The vote is the first on the framework, which will decide the future of privacy and data protection in Europe. The recent revelations surrounding government surveillance involving some of the Internet's biggest companies have highlighted…
Content type: Advocacy
Just over a year ago, vitally important reforms to European privacy and data protection laws were proposed. Now these reforms, which will affect the rights of half a billion Europeans, are being watered down in their passage through various European parliamentary committees as MEPs succumb to an unprecedented industry lobbying onslaught. There is now irrefutable evidence of the impact of this lobbying, thanks to a technology-powered research method comparing corporate lobby documents…
Content type: News & Analysis
Just over a year ago, vitally important reforms to European privacy and data protection laws were proposed. Now these reforms, which will affect the rights of half a billion Europeans, are being watered down in their passage through various European parliamentary committees as MEPs succumb to an unprecedented industry lobbying onslaught. There is now irrefutable evidence of the impact of this lobbying, thanks to a technology-powered research method comparing corporate lobby documents…
Content type: Press release
A European privacy group claimed today that dozens of amendments to the new Data Protection Regulation being proposed by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are being copied word-for-word from corporate lobby papers, with MEPs frequently failing to even remember their own amendments. Max Schrems, of the website and campaign Europe v Facebook, noticed striking similarities between proposed amendments and lobby papers written by representatives of Amazon, eBay, the American Chamber of…
Content type: News & Analysis
Today is Data Privacy Day, which commemorates the 1981 signing of the Coucil of Europe's Convention 108, the first legally binding international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection. It is celebrated all over Europe, as well as in Canada and the United States since 2008. To mark the occasion, Privacy International, together with other prominent privacy and digital rights organisations, is launching the Brussels Declaration. It urges Brussels parliamentarians and European…
Content type: Press release
Google's latest Transparency Report, released at 3pm GMT this afternoon, shows that requests by European governments for the browsing history, email communications, documents and IP addresses of Google's users have skyrocketed since the Transparency Report was launched three years ago. Countries in the European Union made 7,254 requests about 9,240 users or accounts between July and December 2012, averaging over 1,200 requests a month. This represents over a third of all requests made by…