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Content type: Advocacy
To the Members of the European Parliament and to the Committee on Budgets of the European Parliament
The EU urgently needs to step up and provide assistance to protect the health and safety of people trapped in camps on the Greek islands - not just to protect their welfare, but to contain the virus itself as a matter of global public health.
However, as we detail in the briefing below, the current European Commission proposal for funds allocation is insufficient to ensure the safety of…
Content type: Advocacy
UPDATE 13 February: Facebook announced that it would open up its Ad Archive API next month. Read Mozilla's statement about the response here.
On 11 February 2019, Privacy International joined Mozilla and 36 organisations in an open letter to Facebook call on Facebook to make good on its commitments to provide more transparency around political advertising ahead of the 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections.
Specifically, our open letter urges Facebook to:
Roll out a functional, open Ad…
Content type: Advocacy
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The EU extensively bolsters the surveillance and border control capabilities of governments around the world – and is set to dramatically increase such support. Below, we look at how some of these existing funds are being used, how their proposed expansion will undermine people’s privacy around the world for decades to come, and what needs to be done about it.
Migration has dominated the recent EU agenda and will once again be central during this week’s European Council meeting…
Content type: Advocacy
Consumers benefit from the existence of competitive markets, in which they can freely choose among a wide range of products and services. Competition policy plays an important role in this regard by ensuring that competition is not disrupted in a way that can harm consumers directly (e.g. leading to price increases or less choice) or indirectly (e.g. weakening competition as a process by hampering the ability of firms to compete on the merits).
Content type: Advocacy
Today, Privacy International has filed complaints against seven data brokers (Acxiom, Oracle), ad-tech companies (Criteo, Quantcast, Tapad), and credit referencing agencies (Equifax, Experian) with data protection authorities in France, Ireland, and the UK.
It’s been more than five months since the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect. Fundamentally, the GDPR strengthens rights of individuals with regard to the protection of their data, imposes more…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International encourages the European Commission to consider ways to reform or at least re-interpret competition regulation to address the data protection implications and the broader societal challenges posed by the exploitation of data by big corporations. This includes, for example, systematic consideration of data protection issues (including though consultation with relevant data protection authorities and organisations protecting privacy and consumer rights) when assessing mergers…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International's comments to the Article 29 Working Party Guidelines on automated individual decision-making and profiling are here.
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International has responded to the European Commission’s consultation on the interoperability of EU information systems for borders and security.
The Commission is currently looking at ways in which various border control and policing EU databases and IT systems can be connected to share and exchange more data.
The plans raise a number of concerns as highlighted by Privacy International in our response. These relate to significant potential harms associated with…
Content type: Advocacy
On 23 October 2017, Privacy International contributed to the public consultation of the European Commission on improving cross border access to electronic evidence for criminal investigation. The consultation raises important questions, particularly in relation to preserving human rights protection and safeguards as national police forces seek digital evidence in other jurisdictions.
The EU is not the only inter-governmental organisation seeking to address the complex jurisdictional…
Content type: Advocacy
This report sheds light on the current state of affairs in data retention regulation across the EU post the Tele-2/Watson judgment. Privacy International has consulted with digital rights NGOs and industry from across the European Union to survey 21 national jurisdictions (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International welcomes the willingness of the UK government to implement the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which provides stronger standards of protection of personal data to those contained in the EU Directive 1995, whose provisions were implemented in the Data Protection Act 1998. Improved rights and enforcement measures will generate greater trust and therefore greater engagement in the digital environment, which will in turn benefit the economy. …
Content type: Advocacy
After the adoption of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the Data Protection Directive for Law Enforcement Agencies, the EU-US Privacy Shield, your understandable EU privacy policy fatigue is excused.
But when a coalition of tech and telecom industries calls for a relatively obscure EU directive to be repealed, it may unintentionally trigger an atypical Streisand effect: if companies, which often so cavalier to individuals’ privacy, want to get rid of the EU e-privacy…
Content type: Advocacy
Introduction
On 29 February 2016, the European Commission and the US government released the details of the proposed EU-U.S. “Privacy Shield”. The “Privacy Shield” replaces the now defunct so-called “Safe Harbor”.
The Privacy Shield is in fact a significant number of documents from various parts of the U.S. administration, which merely outline the existing, weak U.S. safeguards applicable to personal data of EU citizens. These documents are meant to serve as the basis for an “adequacy”…
Content type: Advocacy
This stakeholder report is a submission by Privacy International (PI). PI is a human rights organisation that works to advance and promote the right to privacy and fight surveillance around the world. PI wishes to bring concerns about the protection and promotion of the right to privacy in Estonia before the Human Rights Council for consideration in Estonia's upcoming Universal Periodic Review.
Content type: Advocacy
Following today's Justice Ministers Council meeting in Luxembourg where an agreement was reached on the proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Privacy International and European Digital Rights (EDRi) issued the following statement:
In January 2012, the European Commission, following extensive consultations, published a draft Regulation. The initiative had three priorities - modernisation of the legal framework for the protection of personal data,…
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: Advocacy
On 25th January 2012, the European Commission published a proposal that would comprehensively reform the European data protection legal regime. One aspect of its proposal, a new Regulation (the “Proposed Regulation”),(1) would modernise and further harmonise the data protection regime created by the Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC). Another aspect of the Commission’s proposal, a new Directive(2) (the “Proposed Directive”), would set out new rules on “the protection of individuals with…