Giusy Cannella

Yesterday, the European Parliament passed a Resolution calling for the suspension of a counter-terrorism agreement with the U.S., following recent allegations that the U.S. has breached the privacy safeguards of the agreement, and in doing so, the privacy of millions of E.U.’s citizens.

Since last year, Access has been working to raise the profile of net neutrality and stop network discrimination in Europe. As result of this work, today Access has launched its policy paper on “Net neutrality: Ending Network Discrimination in Europe”.

In the 6th hearing held by the committee, the MEPs focused on the all-important Safe Harbour provisions, investigating whether personal data of E.U. citizens transferred to U.S. under the arrangements had received adequate legal protection.

During the 5th hearing of Civil Liberties (LIBE) committee inquiry on massive electronic surveillance held on October 3rd, members of the European Parliament have condemned the “deplorable conduct” of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) after their chief Sir Iain Lobban declined the invitation to collaborate to the investigations.

On September 30th, the EP’s Civil Liberties Committee hold the the fourth hearing of its Inquiry on Electronic Mass Surveillance of EU citizens. The mission of this inquiry is to establish facts regard the scope proportionality and legality of NSA spying programs. MEPs are trying to gather information and evidence to decide their course of actions.

The 3rd hearing of the LIBE inquiry into massive electronic surveillance, held on September 24. MEPs called on the Commission to suspend the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP), an agreement that allows for transfer of bank data (from the SWIFT database) to the US authorities for the fight against terrorism and terrorist financing.

On September 5th, the LIBE Committee held the first of a series of hearings as part of the inquiry on “Electronic Mass Surveillance of EU Citizen”s established on July 10 by the Libe Committee. The purpose of this inquiry is to investigate into the NSA and other surveillance programmes, and examine whether those programmes are compatible with EU law.

More disappointing news from the Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes is spreading around Brussels. Contrary to previous statements made by the Commissioner, there are no clear network neutrality provisions contained in forthcoming Regulation for the Telecom Single Market, according to a leaked draft recently published by European Digital Rights (EDRi).

An analysis of the growing problem of network discrimination in Europe.

The European Parliament took a stand for fundamental rights when the Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) rejected a privacy-invasive European Commission proposal to allow the use of air travel Passenger Name Record (PNR) data.