Policy Observatory

Google seems to be reaching out of the internet and into every corner of the world. So what exactly does it want – and can it really be good for us?

Privacy activist Max Schrems filed suit in front of a court in his home country, Austria, and he asked the public to join him: it was possible for any Facebook user of age who is not located in the USA or Canada to join the legal battle against Facebook’s numerous alleged violations of European privacy laws. This is due to the fact that every Facebook user worldwide, living outside of the US or Canada, has a contract with Facebook Ireland Ltd. Mr. Schrems is claiming 500 Euro in symbolic damages per contributing joint plaintiff for alleged privacy violations such as Facebook contributing to NSA´s PRISM program, Graph Search, the Facebook app or third party tracking via “Like Buttons”.

The Romanian intelligence agency (SRI) declared that it is not cooperating with NSA. Yet, an article from The Intercept....

The Romanian Constitutional Court has declared the second data retention law to be unconstitutional on 7 July 2014. The decision will be published in the Official Monitor soon. This is the second data retention law to be declared that it breaches the right to privacy, as stipulated in the Romanian Constitution.

Does free speech give us the right to anonymously troll strangers? What people say online has real consequences. They may end up in prison. They may be named and shamed, and this may be enough to make them suicidal.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation briefing, Flash cookies are stored outside the browser’s control and users cannot view or delete them. Nor are users notified when the cookies (which have no expiry date) are set. Flash cookies can track users in all the ways traditional old-style cookies do, but they can be stored or retrieved whenever a user accesses a page containing a Flash application – which is almost every page that most people access.