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The EU Commission has hired a consulting company to conduct a study on mass retention of telephone and internet data. What we know of the contract makes us suspect that study will be biased.

The coucil of the EU is currently planning to abuse the upcoming ePrivacy regulation to facilitate blanket data retention. For this purpose, the judgement of the CJEU is deliberately misinterpreted.

The ePrivacy regulation aims to protect privacy in electronic communications. But lobby groups are sabotaging it and the Council of the EU is delaying its adoption. Six organisations from several European countries are calling for a strong ePrivacy Regulation. The protection of our privacy is more important than the wish of private enterprises to exploit the value of our data!

Anyone who is concerned with surveillance will hear this statement over and over again. Though dangerous and false, it is very persistent. And we are fed up with it. Ten points against the notion that you have “nothing to hide”.

Embedded metadata can reveal who edited a document. We tested the Metadata Anonymization Tookit (MAT – included in Tails, a Linux version for anonymous communication) to see how such metadata can be removed. We found and reported a security issue. The MAT developers intend to get this fixed now.

Is surveillance getting worse in Finland? Nomi Byström, Executive Director of Electronic Frontier Finland on surveillance and data protection in Finland.

A new Intelligence and Security Services act in the Netherlands will allow the state to tap chat messages, email messages and the websites you visited in bulk. Where is the freedom going? Text by Daphne van der Kroft from Bits of Freedom.

In recent years, security-obsessed politicians and officials have been busy putting into place surveillance mechanisms while ignoring or even denying and perverting the positive effects of digitisation. The following text shows how far Switzerland's Internet policy – despite elements of direct democracy – has gone astray. A guest article by Digitale Gesellschaft Schweiz (“Digital Society Switzerland”).

Dieser offene Brief ruft die politisch Verantwortlichen der Welt dazu auf, die Privatsphäre und die Menschenrechte gerade nach dem Attentat auf Charlie Hebdo zu schützen. Diesen Aufruf hat Digitalcourage gemeinsam mit vielen europäischen Organisationen unterzeichnet.

India is the most populous democracy in the world. And it is quite sophisticated when it comes to spying on its population. A personal account by Leena Simon.