The latest EDRi-gram

*Not looking good in Turkey and Macedonia this season.

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EDRi-gram

fortnightly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe

EDRi-gram 14.08, 20 April 2016
Read online: https://edri.org/edri-gram/14-08/

1. Member Spotlight: Access Now
2. Countering terrorism, a.k.a. the biggest human rights threat of 2016
3. New data protection law in Turkey
4. Huge protest against corruption & surveillance in Macedonia
5. The biggest data breach in Turkish history
6. The lobby-tomy 5: legal help or political choices?
7. Trilogues: the system that undermines EU democracy and transparency
8. DFRI thrown out of conference on surveillance cameras
9. Recommended Action
10. Recommended Reading
11. Agenda
12. About

Members_in_the_spotlight_Banner_narrow

This is the second article of the series "EDRi-Member in the Spotlight"
in which our members have the opportunity to introduce themselves and
their work in depth.

Today we introduce the international organisation "Access Now".

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1. Who are you and what is your organisation’s goal and mission?

Access Now defends and extends the digital rights of users at risk
around the world. We combine innovative policy, user engagement, and
direct technical support, and fight for open and secure communications
for all.

We are fighting against internet shutdowns and mass surveillance, for
corporate and government transparency and a secure internet, for MLAT
reform and net neutrality and we’re really really into encrypting ALL
THE THINGS!

But we are first and foremost a tech-driven organisation. Our brilliant
tech team valiantly runs the Digital Security Helpline which operates
out of Manila, Tunis and Costa Rica, working 24/7 to assist civil
society, activists, bloggers and journalists on the ground in digital
need around the world.

2. How did it all begin, and how did your organisation develop its work?

Access Now was founded in 2009 by four people - Brett Solomon, Cameran
Ashraf, Sina Rabbani and Kim Pham - after the turbulent Iranian
presidential election of that year. During the protests that followed
the contested election, Access Now took a strong role in supporting
secure communications, protecting independent websites and disseminating
the video footage that came out of Iran despite government efforts to
thwart outgoing communication. Since then, the key focus has been on
empowering users and fighting ill-advised government policies in our
increasingly networked, digital world.

3. The biggest opportunity created by advancements in information and
communication technology is…

… fostering free expression, human development, building bridges and
overcoming the lack of diversity. As a society we have the tools to make
a lot of real, positive change.

4. The biggest threat created by advancements in information and
communication technology is…

…. currently to the right to private life and data protection, human
intimacy and trust. We’ve voluntarily accepted cameras and microphones
into all areas of our lives. But it does not have to be that way.
Technology can and must be human rights- protecting and enhancing.

5. Which are the biggest victories/successes/achievements of your
organisation?

We have been involved in global victories for net neutrality in the EU,
the US and in India, for privacy in the EU, against data retention in
Paraguay, for corporate accountability globally, on the government
surveillance in the US and many more. Without our cooperation with EDRi,
none of our success in the EU would have been possible.

One of our greater endeavors is the organisation of a yearly conference,
RightsCon, where the world’s human rights experts, business leaders,
technologists, engineers, investors, activists, and government
representatives come together to discuss issues at the intersection of
technology and human rights. The latest edition recently took place in
San Francisco in March 2016. The atmosphere in this year’s edition was
fantastic and next year we are bringing it to Europe! So let’s make sure
European civil society is over-adequately represented.

Fun fact: In 2010 we were finalists for the European Union's 2010
Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought!

6. If your organisation could now change one thing in your country, what
would that be?

Since we are a global organisation, we will simply ask for the
protection of an open, free and secure internet globally.

Here in Europe we would like to see governments reconnect with the
people they are elected to protect through user-centric rights-enhancing
policies bringing transparency, accountability and digital security.

7. What is the biggest challenge your organisation is currently facing
in your country?

The biggest challenge we are currently seeing globally is with
governments reacting too rashly to current challenges. The digital world
is getting away from them and they are coping with this change by trying
to surveil and control it. We’re seeing massive thresspases against
privacy and fundamental human rights, encryption compromises…
Governments need to relinquish this constant need to meddle and fiddle.
Stop trying to break the internet and just give us the solid legal
certainty which we need to feel protected and free to express ourselves
in the online environment.

8. How can one get in touch with you if they want to help as a
volunteer, or donate to support your work?

We have an Action Center where we list all of our ongoing campaigns.
Every voice counts so signing those petitions and sending emails to
government representatives really helps get our message across. There is
of course a weekly newsletter that goes around and there is also the
opportunity to subscribe to our actions alerts - that way subscribers
can get a notification to join us in protecting human rights online!
There is of course also the traditional way of making a donation or
volunteering to help us at RightsCon next year. All of this can be found
on our website: www.accessnow.org

United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and Human
rights, Ben Emmerson said “the central challenge for human rights in
2016 [is] ensuring governments continue to support a human rights
agenda" while seeking to end terrorism.

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The European Union is also faced with this challenge. In the EU, there
is currently a proposal for a Directive to combat terrorism that, as
currently drafted, would pose threats to freedom of expression, privacy
and security. The draft Directive was drafted in just 2 weeks, with no
impact assessment. This means that the current proposal has neither
evidence of its possible impact on your human rights and freedoms nor a
proof indicating its possible effectiveness and even justifying the need
for a Directive in the first place.

This draft Directive was proposed by the European Commission in December
2015. In the proposal, the Commission expressed its willingness to
address the internet, without any clarity as to what it meant by that.
While the European Parliament has not taken a position on this Directive
yet, the Member States gathered within the Council of the European Union
have adopted their position already. For instance, the Council has
adopted a confusing approach on blocking of websites which is simply
reckless in the absence of an impact assessment. It is based on the
Child Exploitation Directive's provision on blocking, whose
effectiveness has never been assessed. It is also entirely incongruous,
in a Directive whose purpose is to criminalise certain activities.

As for the Parliament, politicians that are part of the Parliament's
civil liberties committee (LIBE) have tabled 438 amendments. Some of
them follow EDRi's recommendations to have strong human rights
safeguards, to stop the criminalisation of speech that is part of our
freedom of expression, to be more precise about the link between a
banned conduct and a terrorist offence, to delete dangerous elements,
such as on malware and “electronic evidence” (whatever that means) and
take-down of legal websites. However, there are some amendments that
risk mirror elements leaking in from the Parliament's non-legislative
report adopted at the end of November 2015, the Dati Report, and new
elements which could undermine the rule of law, encryption, the use of
Tor, among others.

Countries around the world are using measures to combat terrorism and
violent extremism to silence journalists, activists and normal people
who want to express themselves, even if the views are uncomfortable.

We hope the EU will lead by example by preventing the abuses we're
seeing in several EU countries. If, after every terrorist attack,
legislators enact new laws with the hope of creating a feeling of more
security and safety in the population, without actually solving the
problem of terrorism, we will have less freedoms and rights in exchange
of no real solution. Instead, the European Parliament adopted the EU PNR
Directive last week, which is a profiling measure that has not been
proven useful for tackling terrorism.

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has recently described such
reactions very well: “repressive and heavy-handed security responses in
violation of human rights and the rule of law, such as profiling of
certain populations, adoption of intrusive surveillance techniques and
prolongation of declared states of emergency, tend to generate more
violent extremists.”

Instead of restricting our freedoms, human rights and undermining the
values that founded the European Union, effective, evidence-based
measures should be put in place not only to combat terrorism, but also
to prevent it. As Sascha Lobo explained for Spiegel, more resources
should be put in judicial and police personnel. Instead of repairing a
legal system capable of enforcing the rule of law, we are getting more
computers, databases, more laws with far reaching consequences. If this
draft Directive is adopted, particularly if the new damaging proposals
that are on the table are adopted, we will create new dangers, without
solving the real problems that need to be addressed.

EDRi's recommendations for the European Parliament's Draft Report on the
Directive on Combating Terrorism (29.03.2016)
https://edri.org/files/counterterrorism/CounterTerror_LIBEDraftReport_EDRi_position.pdf

UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights
and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism Report (22.02.2016)
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Terrorism/Pages/SRTerrorismIndex.aspx

UN Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism (24.12.2015)
https://undg.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/SG-Plan-of-Action-to-Prevent-Violent-Extremism-1.pdf

Spiegel: The Man Machine: Profound, structural, multiple government
failures (German) (30.03.2016)
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/sascha-lobo-ueber-is-terror-ueberwachung-ist-die-falsche-antwort-a-1084629.html

(Contribution by Maryant Fernández Pérez, EDRi)

Turkish Parliament enacted the Data Protection Law on 24 March 2016 and
it entered into force on 7 April. There had been several attempts for
enacting the Law over the course of more than 10 years, but all of the
bills were later withdrawn by the AKP - Justice and Development Party
(the ruling party since 2002) governments.

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The AKP was quite motivated to enact the law because:

- Due to the nonexistence of Data Protection Law, Turkey was regarded as
an "unsafe country" in terms of data protection and this resulted in
certain difficulties for collaboration of Turkish security agencies with
its counterparts abroad.

- Many Turkish companies could not operate in Europe and other places
for the same reason.

- The government has the plan of establishing a "World Finance Center"
in Istanbul, but that would be impossible without a proper DP Law.

- Turkey is officially a candidate country for membership to the
European Union which enforces member and candidate countries to adopt a
DP Law.

The hesitation of the government was due to the concern that the
previous versions of the law would not be in conformity with the
contemporary approach and thus would not be adequate for realizing the
objectives outlined above. In the earlier versions of the bill, the Data
Protection Board was to be appointed by the government or the President
which draws suspicion to its autonomy. In the last version, four members
of the Board were to be appointed by the government and three members by
the President. This has been changed last minute and the enacted law
envisages that two members are to be appointed by the President, two by
the government and five to be elected by the Parliament.

Another hesitation in the previous versions stemmed from the fact that
several security agencies such as police and secret service were given
exemption for collecting and processing personal data. Although the new
law does not explicitly mention these organisations, it has several
exemptions which will pave the way for these organisations legally to
collect and process data.

CHP - People's Republican Party, the largest opposition party, declared
that it will apply to the Constitutional Court for the annuling of the law.

Turkey’s data protection draft law open to abuse: Expert
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkeys-data-protection-draft-law-open-to-abuse-expert-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=95796&NewsCatID=341

Turkey passes long-awaited data protection law (07.04.2016)
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/turkey-passes-long-awaited-data-protection-law-171736298.html

Turkey’s New Data Protection Law (15.04.2016)
http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/turkey-s-new-data-protection-law-43057/

Turkey Completes Final Step in Approving Data Protection Legislation
(07.04.2016)
http://www.morogluarseven.com/news/turkey-completes-final-step-approving-data-protection-legislation

The political crisis in Macedonia deepened on 12 April when the
President Gjorgi Ivanov announced that he would issue a blanket pardon
to 56 politicians suspected of involvement in serious crimes. Over the
last eight days, tens of thousands of citizens took to the streets of
the capital city Skopje and about a dozen other cities, demanding
justice and restoration of democracy.

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In February 2015, the opposition started revealing excerpts of leaked
wiretaps conducted by the state's Secret Service, alleging that over
20,000 citizens were subject to direct illegal surveillance, as part of
an alleged criminal conspiracy run by the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski
and his family. The illegal surveillance was allegedly conducted with
use of state resources and with compliance of telecom operators.

Using surveillance as a tool for control and intimidation has led to a
decline in the respect for human rights, in particular freedom of
expression. This is demonstrated, for example, by the fact that
Macedonia’s rank on World Press Freedom Index sunk from 34 in 2009 to
118 in 2016.
In June 2015 a probe by group of experts lead by the former European
Union (EU) Commissioner Reinhart Priebe confirmed these allegations and
was the basis for further steps taken by the European Commission (EC).
These steps included setting urgent reform priorities for Macedonia as
an EU candidate country and joint mediation with the USA. The mediation
led to the so-called Pržino Agreement, which stipulated gradual reforms
that would reverse the backsliding from democracy.

One step included the formation of a new institution, the Special Public
Prosecutor (SPP), in charge of investigating the crimes related to the
illegal wiretapping. The SPP faced various obstacles from other state
institutions after it started investigations of various wrongdoings,
including electoral fraud, torture of political prisoners, and misuse of
state funds. The legal grounds of the announced presidential pardon for
suspects under its investigations is highly controversial, but if
implemented would ensure impunity and make the SPP work irrelevant.

Angered by this abuse of state function and by the prospect of
continuing rule of what they see as mafia structure maintaining the
control of the state, citizens started protesting daily in the streets
of Skopje, and later in other cities. At first numbering hundreds, their
numbers swelled to tens of thousands in the capital and several
thousands in the cities of Bitola, Strumica, Prilep, Kumanovo, Shtip,
Kochani, with other cities announcing they would join the protests in
the coming days.

The protest's main demands are restoration of the rule of law,
punishment of organised crime, and all perpetrators being held
accountable. As a main slogan, the protesters chant:
“No Justice, No Peace!” They also address the lack of freedom of
expression, with: “No More Silence!”

The protesters jokingly use the term “multicolored revolution” as some
of them throw eggs and paint at government buildings, esp. those built
under highly controversial project Skopje 2014, which incurred costs of
over € 630 million without public consultation. These new constructions,
such as the Triumphal Arch from 2012, new “baroque” facades and
fountains are perceived as symbols of power of the regime. According to
Macedonian law, these forms of vandalism, alongside graffiti, are
considered misdemeanors and usually do not incite interventions by riot
police.

The EU invited the leaders of the four biggest political parties in
Macedonia, for negotiations in Vienna on 22 April, to find ways to
continue the blocked implementation of the Pržino Agreement. The
exclusion of the civil society from the previous rounds of negotiations
lead to compromise solutions that fuel the anger of the protesters, who
demand that end of impunity for criminal responsibility take precedence
and be the precondition for all eventual political reforms supported by
the international community.

Macedonia: Massive surveillance revelation: 20 000 people wiretapped
(11.02.2015)
https://edri.org/macedonia-massive-surveillance-revelation/

Macedonia: a superficial democracy in the shadow of crises (01.04.2016)
http://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2016-04-01/macedonia-a-superficial-democracy-shadow-crises

Macedonia president halts wiretapping inquiry (12.04.2016)
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36031417

EU Commissioner Criticizes Macedonian President For Halting Wiretap
Probe (12.04.2016)
http://www.rferl.mobi/a/eu-criticizes-macedonian-president-wiretapping/27670931.html

Macedonia President’s Amnesty Move Prompts Civil Unrest (14.04.2016)
http://www.wsj.com/articles/macedonia-presidents-amnesty-move-prompts-civil-unrest-1460667449#livefyre-comment

U.S. Mission to the OSCE: On Developments in Macedonia: Statement to the
PC (14.04.2016)
https://osce.usmission.gov/on-developments-in-macedonia-statement-to-the-pc/

U.S. Dept. of State: Macedonia Country Report on Human Rights Practices
for 2015 (13.04.2016)
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2015&dlid=252873#wrapper

Macedonia corruption: Fourth night of protests as snap election called
(15.04.2016)
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36058173

‘Without Justice, There's No Peace!': Macedonians March Against
President's Pardon for Politicians Under Investigation (15.04.2016)
https://globalvoices.org/2016/04/15/without-justice-theres-no-peace-macedonians-march-against-presidents-pardon-for-politicians-under-investigation/

The Budding Autocrats of the Balkans (15.04.2016)
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/15/the-budding-autocrats-of-the-balkans-serbia-macedonia-montenegro/

EU Attempts to Salvage Macedonia Crisis Deal (18.04.2016)
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/eu-attempt-to-salvage-macedonia-crisis-deal-04-18-2016

Protests in Macedonia Gain Momentum as New Round of Political
Negotiations Is Announced (19.04.2016)
https://globalvoices.org/2016/04/19/protests-in-macedonia-gain-momentum-as-new-round-of-political-negotiations-is-announced/

Macedonia’s political crisis: Make or break for civil society (19.04.2015)
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/04/19/macedonias-political-crisis-make-or-break-for-civil-society/

“No to negotiations” shout citizens, they demand equality, justice and
freedom (20.04.2016)
http://meta.mk/en/no-to-negotiations-shout-citzens-they-demand-equality-justice-and-freedom/

2016 World Press Freedom Index (20.04.2016)
https://rsf.org/en/macedonia

(Contribution by Filip Stojanovski, Metamorphosis)

About 50 million personal records of Turkish citizens have been made
publicly available in a searchable database on the internet. Ironically,
although the site that holds the database is open to the entire world,
it is one of the 110,000 sites blocked by Turkish government and can
only be accessed from Turkey via a virtual private network (VPN). The
database contains personal information such as names, citizenship
numbers, parent names and addresses of 49,611,709 citizens. This huge
number involved makes the breach the most serious in Turkish history. By
comparison: the Office of Personnel Management leak in April 2015
involved the personal records of 22 million public servants in the US.

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Contrary to the reports in the international media, the leak does not
seem to be recent, but what is new is, that the data is now available on
the net. In Turkey, citizenship data has been available on the black
market for years. It was mainly sold to solicitors and cargo companies
which need accurate addresses of individuals. Several people were taken
into custody for obtaining the data on 27 July 2010 and twelve of them
were later sentenced.

The version available on the internet seems to be related to the 2009
elections, as it contains data on citizens that were over 18 years of
age at that time. The government was quick to blame the largest
opposition party (CHP) and its arch-rival Fethullah Gülen, a US-based
cleric for leaking the database at the same time. It is currently
considering not to give electorate data to the parties in future
elections. The opposition party responded that this was nonsense and it
was only one of the 30 parties that received the database. According to
CHP, this accusation is an indication of the intention of further fraud
by the ruling party AKP by keeping information from them.

As a potential ticking bomb, all health records such as doctor visits,
treatments, health tests and medicine prescribed for all citizens are
also kept in a central database in Turkey. This is permitted by the new
Data Protection Law and any similar breach of that database will have
even more serious consequences in future.

Personal data of 50 million Turkish citizens, incl Erdogan’s reportedly
leaked online (04.04.2016)
https://www.rt.com/news/338409-personal-data-turkey-leaked/

Personal details of 50 million Turkish citizens leaked online, hackers
claim (04.04.2016)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/04/personal-details-of-50-million-turkish-citizens-leaked-online-ha/

Hack Brief: Turkey Breach Spills Info on More Than Half Its Citizens
(05.04.2016)
https://slim-weight.info/2016/04/hack-brief-turkey-breach-spills-info-half-citizens/%3C/p%3E%3Cp class="paywall">Correction: Turkey-Data Leak story (06.04.2016)
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0d88b2c4311a464587a485ad56ac986e/data-nearly-50-million-turks-allegedly-leaked-online

Turkey launches inquiry into leak of 50 million citizens' data (04.06.2016)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-cyber-idUSKCN0X31ZK

Is legal help always objective? Writing laws is a complicated process. A
frequently used lobby strategy involves offering “legal help” and
arguments that promise legal certainty. Parties claim to make no
substantive choices for policy makers, but is that really the case?

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The new European data protection regulation is the most lobbied piece of
legislation thus far because the subject is very important and touches
upon almost every aspect of our daily lives. Therefore Bits of Freedom
used the Dutch freedom of information act to ask the government to
publicise all the lobby documents they received on this new law. We
published these documents on the Bits of Freedom website with our
analysis in a series of blogs. What parties lobby? What do they want?
What does that mean for you? We have now translated these nine blogs
into English for the EDRi-gram. This is part 5.
Drafting legislation is a complicated process, in particular where it
concerns laws of this magnitude. An additional issue is that the subject
matter is often technical in nature. This means that policy makers
actively seek the help of experts. It also means that any offered help
is very welcome.

Technical amendments

Parties offer that help happily. The Dutch employers' federation VNO-NCW
offers the Dutch Permanent Representation (perm rep) its expertise in a
76 page letter. The letter contains “technical amendments.” In other
words, matters that according to them are not political. It concerns the
correct legal articulation of an article, but also other choices: how
access request should be answered (“that they should be answered is
without question”).
The letter contains a lot of legal fine tuning. For example, the
employers' organisation corrects the point regarding the obligation to
provide information to people, explaining that this should happen in “a
notice” and not in “a policy” which is written into the regulation. That
is a justifiable correction: after all, you're not sending policies to
people, but a notification that contains that policy.

However, it appears choices are made that go one step further than mere
legal fine tuning. In one article for example, they edit the text to say
that an organisation may process information for a legitimate interest
or for “that of a third party.” That makes the article much broader in
scope. Although they state that this would be a return to the previous
privacy directive, it concerns choices that are controversial. They also
write that it should be left to organisations themselves how they answer
information requests (electronically or not?), but that also exceeds
mere legal fine tuning. In yet other articles they talk about
diminishing the “burdens” on companies – which frames the issue in very
negative terms. Even though this can sometimes be a good thing, it isn't
necessarily neutral.

Clarification

Techamerica Europe (an organisation which acted on behalf of tech
companies with American roots) also offered some clarifications in an
email to the perm rep and the ministry of justice. They mention a
misunderstanding about profiling, in which they think the intention
behind the article hasn't been addressed properly. The text at the time
said that people only have to be informed about profiling if it has a
“significant effect” on them and that only then they should be offered
an opt-out. This means that the protection of this article grants
applies only in limited cases, because of its low threshold. However,
they want to change the wording “significant effect” into “severely
affects.” This would mean you would only have to offer an opt-out from
profiling if it has really severe consequences. This makes the
protection offerered by this article much more difficult to apply. About
the original text they say:
“We reject this idea, and believe that the intention of the Article is
to focus on clearly unfair or discriminatory practices such as the
denial of insurance cover.”

Oh really? Many different organisations, including us, would disagree
with that. To us, this article is about allowing people to know that
personality profiles are being developed about them and allowing them
protection from this. Furthermore, it would be difficult to prove
“severe consequences” in this context, which would drastically limit the
protection the article offers.

Legal certainty

Closely tied to this legal help is the concept of legal certainty. It
means you should be able to trust a clear interpretation of the law,
instead of encountering surprising interpretations that could cost you
either freedom, money, or something else. In other words: legal
certainty is important for businesses and citizens alike.

This legal certainty isn't always there in the regulation. The law aimed
to harmonise all privacy legislation in Europe. The current text however
has many exceptions allowing the member states of the European Union to
regulate areas themselves or allowing the Commission to adopt further
clarifying measures (called delegated and implementing acts).

IBM justly addresses some remarks to this in a letter to the ministry of
economic affairs:
“The final text must, then, provide for a high degree of legal certainty
and predictability. With its [49] delegated and implementing acts, the
draft does anything but.”

But IBM extends this legal certainty to the obligations put on businesses.
“Newly proposed obligations are too vague or too complex to be properly
understood – or complied with. New constraints on implementation would
remove the flexibility European businesses need to innovate and thrive.
Nor are IBM’s concerns limited to the information technology sector in
which we participate.”
They make a connection between legal certainty and obligations. IBM
wants more flexibility. But that would make it more unpredictable for
people. How would people be able to tell which obligations apply to
companies and whether they stick to those obligations?

Industry lobbying ultimately led to the final text of the General Data
Protection Regulation having significantly more national exceptions than
the preceding legislation had articles – a case of politicians learning
the hard way that lobbyists don't always know what they want.
It shows that although offering legal help can be necessary, it can also
be abused.

To be continued.

Want to continue reading about this? On the Bits of Freedom website, you
can find all the lobby documents and the analysis. The next part is
about the “not in my backyard” argument.

For the series of blogs and documents, see the Bits of Freedom website
https://www.bof.nl/category/lobby-tomie/

Email VNO-NCW en MKB Nederland to Dutch perm rep (06.03.2013)
https://www.bof.nl/static/lobby-tomie-documenten/EU/20130306-056-vnoncw-mkb-nederland.pdf

Email by TechAmerica Europe to Dutch perm rep (15.01.2014)
https://www.bof.nl/static/lobby-tomie-documenten/EU/20140115-028-tech-america-europe.pdf

Letter by TechAmerica Europe to ministry of justice (14.01.2014)
https://www.bof.nl/static/lobby-tomie-documenten/VENJ/20140114-023-techamerica.pdf

Letter by IBM to ministry of economic affairs
https://www.bof.nl/static/lobby-tomie-documenten/EZ/00000000-11-ibm.pdf

(Contribution by Floris Kreiken, Bits of Freedom)

Most of the legislation of the European Union (EU) is today adopted
using an informal, non-democratic, non-accountable and non-transparent
process. This mechanism is known in the EU bubble as "trilogues" or
"trialogues". Trilogues are a set of informal negotiations between the
European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European
Commission to fast-track legislation, with a view to reaching early
agreements on legislation.

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The EU body in charge of fighting against maladministration, the
European Ombudsman, decided to open an investigation to assess the need
for a trilogues reform. As part of this inquiry, she opened a
consultation to ask the public about its opinion and experience
regarding the transparency of trilogues. On 31 March, EDRi submitted its
response, where we ask for an urgent reform of trilogues, echoing the
concerns voiced by an open joint civil society letter sent to the three
institutions.

Trilogue negotiations are worrisome mainly because

- only a very limited number of participants negotiate for over 500
Million of people and their names are usually not disclosed;

- negotiations are conducted behind closed doors;

- trilogue documents are not released to the public as a general rule;

- access to trilogue documents is often denied, as evidenced in EDRi's
freedom of information requests for the trilogue documents of the
Telecoms Single Market Regulation (the regulation dealing with net
neutrality in the EU), for example.

- trilogues are subject to undue and undisclosed external pressure.
Lobbyists can get an insight of trilogue negotiations if they become
friendly with the negotiators. What about the general public? Wouldn't
you like to also have access to documents that will likely affect your
life?;

- trilogues profoundly undermine and weaken the position of the only
directly democratically-elected institution in the EU, the European
Parliament;

- the process strips the decision-making process of accountability,
because secrecy hides how the agreements are reached.

A reform of trilogues should seek to solve these problems. In our
response, EDRi emphasises that this would not only benefit EU
law-making, but would also contribute to have greater legitimacy,
integrity, accountability and scrutiny of the legislative work the EU
institutions are conducting.

We eagerly look forward to see the results of the consultation and the
European Ombudsman's recommendations to end unaccountable, undemocratic
and non-transparent law-making in the EU. EDRi and 19 other civil
society organisations are still waiting for the Council of the European
Union to respond to the letter sent to the Commission, Parliament and
Council in September 2015. So far, only the European Commission and the
Parliament have responded, albeit unsatisfactorily. The Council is the
least transparent of the three. Stay tuned for new developments.

EDRi's response to the European Ombudsman's public consultation on the
transparency of trilogues (31.03.2016)
https://edri.org/files/transparency/TriloguesConsultation_EDRiresponse.pdf

EDRi: Civil society calls for reform of trialogues in a letter to EU
Commission, Parliament and Council (30.09.2015)
https://edri.org/civil_society_calls_for_reform_of_trialogues_in_letter_to_eu_commission_parliament_and_council/

EDRi: Better Regulation Interinstitutional Agreement – we have concerns!
(21.12.2015)
https://edri.org/better-regulation-interinstitutional-agreement-we-have-concerns/

(Contribution by Maryant Fernández Pérez, EDRi)

Every year about 200 representatives from the Swedish security industry
meet to discuss security cameras. This year's conference was
particularly interesting. The Swedish government has appointed a
commission to investigate possible changes in existing laws to make it
easier to get permission to use surveillance cameras in public spaces,
schools and workplaces.

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Support our work - make a recurrent donation!
https://edri.org/supporters/
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These cameras are usually called surveillance or security cameras.
However the security industry do not like the connotation of these
words. Instead, they have begun to speak of "Trygghetskameror" which is
difficult to translate accurately, but might be called "comforting
cameras". The organisers want to give the impression that surveillance
cameras make us safer.

If you believe that, shouldn't you welcome the added security it would
mean to have a few extra cameras filming the participants at the
conference? Therefore, DFRI was there with our own cameras to help out.
To our (not so great) surprise, the participants did not feel at all
comforted by the fact that we filmed them. These camera friends, as they
call themselves, did not want to be the target of surveillance any more
than anybody else. We were asked to leave the site so we continued our
filming outside as the participants arrived at the conference.

Various studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of surveillance
cameras in Stockholm, Oslo, London and many other cities. The results
are consistent and show that the cameras have no more than a marginal
effect. We have recently seen several examples of terrorists not being
deterred by security cameras. The same applies to violent offenders.
Drunk and emotional people commit almost all violent crimes in public
places. They do not give surveillance a thought when emotions take over.
Limiting alcohol use has proven far more effective to curb violence than
mass surveillance of all honest citizens peacefully moving around in the
city.

Protests against increased surveillance (in Swedish) (14.04.2016)
http://www.dn.se/sthlm/protester-mot-okad-overvakning/

DFRI thrown out of conference on "Comforting Cameras" (in Swedish)
(13.03.2016)
https://www.dfri.se/aktion-under-trygghetskamerans-dag/

Surveillance cameras provide no security (in Swedish) (11.04.2016)
https://www.dfri.se/overvakningskameror-ger-ingen-trygghet/

(Contribution by Peter Michanek, DFRI)

Save the Internet
The EU Regulation contains good principles to ensure that you can
connect to any other point on the net without discrimination. However,
some parts of the regulation could be abused to undermine net
neutrality. The legislators decided to leave the responsibility for
claryifing the uncertainties of the text to the telecoms regulators.
https://savetheinternet.eu/en/

Report net neutrality violations to "Respect My Net"
"Internet users should be in charge of their Internet connections.
Instead, however, Internet access providers increasingly undermine this
expectation and limit our online communications and behaviour. They do
this, for example, by blocking or restricting access to certain kinds of
online services, content and applications. The “Respect My Net” platform
will allow individuals to report such abusive behaviour by Internet
access providers."
http://respectmynet.eu/

Report: Case Study on ICT and Human Rights
http://www.fp7-frame.eu/report-case-study-on-ict-and-human-rights/

Macedonia: Society on Tap
https://privacyinternational.org/node/816

A conversation with Jasna Koteska on state relations and surveillance in
Macedonia
https://privacyinternational.org/node/814

Reflection on the Review of the ePrivacy Directive workshop
https://medium.com/@Pinkeee/reflection-on-the-review-of-the-eprivacy-directive-workshop-8cba74714a32#.wvhpe9cqf

The secret rules of the internet. The murky history of moderation, and
how it’s shaping the future of free speech
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderator-history-youtube-facebook-reddit-censorship-free-speech

Investor-State dispute settlement undermines rule of law and democracy,
UN expert tells Council of Europe
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=19839&LangID=E

Decision to prosecute satirist in Germany worrying, OSCE media freedom
representative says, reiterating call to decriminalize defamation
http://www.osce.org/fom/234131

The Trade Secrets Directive: What it does – and does not – mean
http://www.euractiv.com/section/trade-society/news/demystifying-the-trade-secrets-directive/

20.04.2016, Barcelona, Spain
The 7th Biannual Surveillance and Society Conference
http://www.ssn2016.net

21.04.2016, Barcelona, Spain
Surveillance: Power, Performance and Trust – 7th biennial Surveillance &
Society conference
http://www.surveillance-studies.net/?p=1162

02.05.2016, Station Berlin
re:publica 2016
https://re-publica.de/

20.05.2016,
World Congress of the Hedonist International
http://worldcongress.hedonist-international.org/?lang=en

EDRi-gram is a fortnightly newsletter about digital civil rights by
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organisations from across Europe. EDRi takes an active interest in
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and awareness through the EDRi-gram.

All contributions, suggestions for content, corrections or agenda-tips
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