News and Research articles on Civil Society

Transnational collective actions for cross-border data protection violations

Federica Casarosa, European University Institute
PUBLISHED ON: 16 Sep 2020 DOI: 10.14763/2020.3.1498

Although the GDPR paves the way for a coordinated EU-wide legal action against data protection infringements, only a reform of private international law rules can enhance the opportunities of data subjects to enforce their rights.

Regulatory arbitrage and transnational surveillance: Australia’s extraterritorial assistance to access encrypted communications

Monique Mann, Deakin University
Angela Daly, University of Strathclyde
Adam Molnar, University of Waterloo
PUBLISHED ON: 16 Sep 2020 DOI: 10.14763/2020.3.1499

This paper is part of Geopolitics, jurisdiction and surveillance, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Monique Mann and Angela Daly. Introduction Since the Snowden revelations in 2013 (see e.g., Lyon, 2014; Lyon, 2015) an ongoing policy issue has been the legitimate scope of surveillance, and the extent to which individuals and groups can assert their fundamental rights, including privacy. There has been a renewed focus on policies regarding access to encrypted communications, which are part of a longer history of the ‘cryptowars’ of the 1990s (see e.g., Koops, 1999). We examine these provisions in the Anglophone ‘Five Eyes’ (FVEY) The FVEY partnership is a comprehensive …

The European Commission recently released its first review of two years of application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). René Mahieu and Jef Ausloos do not agree with the largely positive self-assessment and explain their main points of contention by summarising their own submission to the Commission.

Management of the internet by the principle of the multistakeholder governance model has survived attempts of replacing it with inter-government management. What additional principles are useful to guide global internet governance and enhance ICANN’s legitimacy, seen in light of recent challenges? Are the disagreements over global internet governance also about diverging understandings of the goals in internet governance?

Data-driven elections: implications and challenges for democratic societies

Colin J. Bennett, University of Victoria
David Lyon, Queen's University
PUBLISHED ON: 31 Dec 2019 DOI: 10.14763/2019.4.1433

In the wake of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, it is timely to review the state of the debate about the impact of data-driven elections and to identify key questions that require academic research and regulatory response. The papers in this collection, by some of the world’s most prominent elections researchers, offer that assessment.

The regulation of online political micro-targeting in Europe

Tom Dobber, University of Amsterdam
Ronan Ó Fathaigh, University of Amsterdam
Frederik J. Zuiderveen Borgesius, Radboud University
PUBLISHED ON: 31 Dec 2019 DOI: 10.14763/2019.4.1440

This paper discusses how online political micro-targeting is regulated in Europe, from the perspective of data protection law, freedom of expression, and political advertising rules.

After a process that took more than five years, Serbia finally received a new Law on Personal Data Protection [in Serbian] - adopted by the National Assembly last November. The law closely follows EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), almost to the point of literal translation into Serbian. That was expected, due to Serbia’s EU membership candidacy.

Collectively exercising the right of access: individual effort, societal effect

René L. P. Mahieu, Delft University of Technology
Hadi Asghari, Delft University of Technology
Michel van Eeten, Delft University of Technology
PUBLISHED ON: 13 Jul 2018 DOI: 10.14763/2018.3.927

Attaining transparency and accountability through the right of access is a struggle; Is there a way forward through using the power of the collective?