Policy Observatory
A committee of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe is drafting a recommendation on internet freedom and is requesting public comments until the end of the month.
On 28 May, the Czech National Convent on the European Union made several recommendations for the area of the European Digital Agenda. Among others, the National Convent recommended to dedicate Digital Agenda policy to only one agency, to remove obstacles to cross-border online trade as quickly as possible, to adhere to the principle of digital by default, and to have open-source software requirement as a standard component of tenders. The recommendations and background paper are available in English at the end of this page.
Today, David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression published a major report on encryption and anonymity in the digital age. ARTICLE 19 welcomes the report as a major step forward for the protection of the rights to free expression and privacy online. We call on governments to review their laws, policies and practices and bring them in line with the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations as soon as possible.
Tomorrow, U.N. Human Rights Council will deliver its official response to the 348 recommendations received during the second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the U.S. human rights record in Geneva, highlighting that the U.S. government does not protect the privacy rights of non-citizens beyond its borders.
In the once-every-four-years review, other countries made 16 recommendations that focus on privacy and surveillance as areas where the U.S. needs to improve its laws and practices. Access and other civil society groups called attention to these recommendations when they took part in the U.S. State Department consultation on the UPR in July.
The European Data Protection Supervisor issued an opinion containing recommendations for the police and justice sectors. EDPS recalls that data protection in the police and justice sectors should be fully consistent with the general rules contained in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and should only contain specifications and adjustments where necessary in view of the specific nature of these sectors. The scope of the Directive should be limited to the areas where specific rules are really necessary, namely the activities of criminal law enforcement by police and judicial authorities, as was the case in the original proposal of the Commission. Moreover, the performance of law enforcement tasks by non-public entities and organisations should be subject to the GDRP.
Links to the press release and opinion.
The International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications adopted new recommendations to improve the privacy and security of Internet Telephony technologies. The Berlin-based Working Group includes Data Protection Authorities and experts who work together to address emerging privacy challenges. "Privacy and Security Issues in Internet Telephony (VoIP)" focuses on the gap in "the legal protection and confidentiality of communications." The experts urge service provide to adopt "similar privacy and data protection" safeguards to all services. EPIC presented a comprehensive country report at the last meeting of the Working Group outlining recent developments in the United States. EPIC will host the 60th meeting of the International Working Group in Washington DC in April 2017.