On Wednesday, China’s parliamentary spokeswoman tried to play down the impact the proposed legislation might have on foreign tech businesses, in the face of U.S. fears it would require companies to hand over sensitive data to the country’s government.
The anti-terror law is still under review, but if passed, it would require tech companies to give encryption keys to the authorities, and create “back doors” into their systems for government surveillance access.
On 19 February 2015, the Danish government presented a 12-point plan for new anti-terror initiatives in response to the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris and the shooting incident in Copenhagen on 14 February. This will become the third major anti-terror package since 2001 to be presented to the Danish Parliament.
The focus of the plan is on surveillance measures in Denmark and abroad through increased budgets, new IT-systems, and new powers for the intelligence services, the Danish Defence Intelligence Services (DDIS) and the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET), which is part of the Danish police.
The most controversial element is targeted surveillance and eavesdropping of communications of Danish citizens abroad. This will be done by DDIS without a court order.
The recent terrorist attacks in Europe have led to many statements implying the necessity of limiting citizens’ fundamental rights to ensure public safety. At the European level we are faced with the alarming prospect of air passenger data (Passenger Name Records, PNR) collection and long-term storage, while in France the legislative mills are turning even faster.
Last week, the French government enacted a decree that enables the de-listing of websites from search engines without any judicial oversight. The decree targets websites that distribute child abuse content as well as sites that incite or endorse terrorism. This comes only a month after another decree that enabled the administrative blocking of websites.
France's government is pressing a surveillance bill that would give French intelligence services legal backing to vacuum up metadata in hopes of preventing an imminent terror attack.
The bill "would pave the way for extremely intrusive surveillance practices with no judicial pre-authorization," the organization Amnesty International said in a statement.
The bill was proposed long before the deadly Paris attacks by Islamic extremists earlier this year, but the government says it takes on added urgency with each person who radicalizes and turns against France.
On 26 February 2015, MEP Timothy Kirkhope presented to the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) a revised draft of the European Union Passenger Name Records proposal (see revisions here).
Unfortunately, this latest revision to the PNR proposal doesn’t make many improvements when it comes to protecting private information. To make matters worse, several MEPs have proposed extending this type of data collection to other means of transport. This reinforces our concern that adoption of the PNR proposal could lead to the normalisation of mass surveillance, spreading to other areas of EU citizens’ personal life.
Similar to last year's bill, the new USA Freedom Act attempts to end the bulk collection of calling records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act by limiting collection to instances where there is "reasonable, articulable suspicion" that a "specific selection term" used to request call detail records is associated with international terrorism. The government must use a specific selection term, which represents an "individual, account, or personal device."
Policy Observatory