Germany’s largest telecommunications operator for the first time on 5 May 2014 published a ‘transparency report’ on surveillance requests by German authorities. Kirsten Gollatz reveals how this new statitical input fits into the larger picture.
The European Union’s Court of Justice has ruled against Google in a case in which a Spanish citizen, backed by his national data protection authority, wanted the company to remove search links to an old local newspaper story related to his bankruptcy. Jef Ausloos argues that implications should not be too extreme, but warns of the Court’s prioritising of data subjects over internet users.
The NETmundial conference on internet governance was heralded as a success. But in civil society, assessments have been more nuanced.
Flappy Bird, Threes, Ridiculous Fishing - three mobile games and three high profile examples of the games industry's relationship with ‘clones’.
It was a fail. At the 27th WIPO meeting in Geneva the European Commission and Council representatives did not agree on advancing work on copyright exemptions for libraries and archives.
In an ambitious move, the Brazilian government, technical and civil society organised a meeting to address key issues of internet governance. While not everybody was happy with the final result, process-wise it was a landmark meeting.
The computer security vulnerability ‘Heartbleed’ made the headlines worldwide. With operators still patching servers and users changing passwords, the question remains: how to prevent such failures in the future?
Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 our international system is based upon the principle of territorial sovereignty. Today, however, cross-border online spaces made possible by the internet span across a system of fragmented national jurisdictions. Tension rises since we do not have the legal equivalent to the technical interoperability that enables the global internet. A choice has to be made.
On April 8, the European Court of Justice made a clear decision invalidating the EU data retention directive. Legal scholar Sebastian Leuschner hits the floor running with an op-ed on what this landmark decision means for national data retention laws.
The European Court of Justice today decided against the EU legislator and declared the data retention directive of 2006 null and void. A historic judgement, many parties say, and it means that implementations have to be rolled back all over Europe.