The European Academy for Freedom of Information and Data Protection (EAID) has posed questions on data protection and freedom of information for the European Parliament elections on 9 June 2024. The answers given by political parties in Germany are documented below. The document is limited to the responses received by 29 May. It will be updated as further responses are received. To the ...

Press Release Prof Ulrich Kelber, Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI) until the beginning of July, has joined the European Academy for Freedom of Information and Data Protection (EAID). Its Chairman Peter Schaar, who was also BfDI from 2003 to 2013, is delighted with the new addition. "With Ulrich Kelber, we are gaining a committed and competent new colleague. In his years as ...

by Peter Schaar, 2 June 2024 The framework conditions for digitalisation are increasingly being determined at European level. The EAID therefore asked the parties running in the European elections on 9 June 2024 eight questions on data protection and transparency. The wording of the answers received by the end of May (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP and Piratenpartei) can be found ...

Text messages (SMS, WhatsApp messages etc.) have become a widespread means of communications, often replacing e-mail altogether. This is true for private individuals as well as for government officials. It is well known how important text messages were for Angela Merkel. Whether this is is also the case with her successor is not yet known. The President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also uses text messages intensively. For example, she communicated in ...

Sir Bruce Slane, New Zealand’s first Privacy Commissioner, at the end of his term of office in 2003 highlighted the importance of privacy by drawing a parallel to the air we breathe: both are invisible and we only notice it once it’s gone. So when Scott McNealy said in 1999: “You have zero privacy anyway, get over it” he might as well have said: “You don’t have any air to breathe, so just stop breathing.” Twenty years later, Mark Zuckerberg uttered: “The future is ...

By Peter Schaar, European Academy for Freedom of Information and Data Protection, former Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information. On November 1, 2021, China's data protection law will come into force. Will this dispel all concerns about China's handling of personal data? Can European companies trust that their data will be processed ...

September 28 is the International Freedom of Information Day. A good occasion to remind the new majority in the Federal German Parliament that the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Offcial Documents (Tromsoe Convention) entered into force in December 2020, but not in the Federal Republic of Germany, a country which has been a member of the Council of Europe for 70 years now. Nevertheless the past ...

Vaccines developed in record time to protect against Covid-19 have been called the key out of the pandemic, even though it is not yet clear whether vaccinated people can continue to transmit the virus. At the same time, it is reported that manufacturers may not be able to meet their delivery commitments, or may be delayed. The question of liability for vaccine damage, which has naturally played an important role ...

Vaccines developed in record time to protect against Covid-19 have been called the key out of the pandemic, even though it is not yet clear whether vaccinated people can continue to transmit the virus. At the same time, it is reported that manufacturers may not be able to meet their delivery commitments, or may be delayed. The question of liability for vaccine damage, which has naturally played an important role in the negotiations between the EU Commission and the ...

By Peter Schaar Just before Christmas, the European Commission gifted us with a draft Digital Services Act (DSA) - COM (2020) 825 final of 15.12.2020. The new regulatory framework aims to better protect consumers and their fundamental rights online, create a powerful and clear framework for transparency and accountability of online platforms, while improving ...