News and Research articles on Google+

Necessary and inherent limits to internet surveillance

Joss Wright, Oxford Internet Institute
PUBLISHED ON: 5 Aug 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.3.184

There are significant dangers in surveilling online communications unless the mechanisms and policies of surveillance are subject to strict and legally enforceable standards of transparency, oversight, and control.

EuroDIG discusses variants for EU net neutrality rule

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten

PUBLISHED ON: 21 Jun 2013

Details about a future European net neutrality rule are still lacking, but competing models from EU member states are already on the table. Should it be a law, like in the Netherlands and Slovenia, or are co-regulatory guidelines like in Norway doing the job. The Internet Policy Review's Monika Ermert was at EuroDIG this week and found some leads.

Cloud computing: analysing the trade-off between user comfort and autonomy

Primavera De Filippi, Research and Studies Center of Administrative Science (CERSA/CNRS), Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas)
PUBLISHED ON: 13 Jun 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.2.135

This article presents a general analysis of how user autonomy in the internet cloud is increasingly put into jeopardy by the growing comfort and efficiency of the user-interface. Although this issue has not been, thus far, explicitly addressed by the law, it is a fundamental ethical question that should be carefully assessed to guide the future deployment of cloud computing.

Time to take stock: twelve internet and jurisdiction trends in retrospect

Paul Fehlinger, Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network

PUBLISHED ON: 11 Apr 2013

With the growing tension between the cross-border internet and the patchwork of national jurisdictions, it becomes crucial to keep track of key global trends that drive the debate on appropriate frameworks. Based on the 2012 monitoring work of the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, twelve high-level patterns can be identified. Paul Fehlinger of the I&J project reports.

Foreign clouds in the European sky: how US laws affect the privacy of Europeans

Primavera De Filippi, Research and Studies Center of Administrative Science (CERSA/CNRS), Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas)
PUBLISHED ON: 19 Mar 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.1.113

Cloud computing provides a large number of advantages to many internet users. Most of the perceived benefits are related to the concept of ubiquity, or the ability to access data from anywhere at any time, regardless of the device used. Yet, these benefits come at a cost. The widespread deployment of cloud computing services is source of growing concern as regards the fundamental rights of EU citizens.

Dangerous Liaisons? Governments, companies and Internet governance

Francesca Musiani, MINES ParisTech
PUBLISHED ON: 18 Feb 2013 DOI: 10.14763/2013.1.108

Private actors in the information technology sector are currently playing an increasingly important role in content mediation, as well as in regulation of online forms of expression, with implications for both internet rights and economic freedom. The latest Google Transparency Report (Google, 2013) released on January 24, 2013, sends a clear and somewhat disquieting message to the advocates of a more transparent internet governance worldwide. Several governments in the European Union are submitting a steadily increasing number of requests to the giant of online information search, with two purposes: the acquisition of several types of sensitive information about internet users – including …