Update on the Legal opinion of the Legal Service of the EP (18 February 2016) The Legal Service of the European Parliament issued on 14 February 2016 a legal opinion on the draft EU-US Umbrella agreement concerning the protection of personal data and cooperation between law enforcement authorities in the EU and the US. In this paper, published recently on the Website of Statewatch the Legal ...

The Snowden revelations revealed just how far some states had departed from the guarantees of privacy enshrined in the human and civil rights agreements of the post-war era. The European Union can play the central role in setting enforceable data protection standards internationally, however resisting the logic of surveillance also depends on pressure from society, writes Peter Schaar. Read the full article in ...

I want to inform you about my las posting on facebook: "Dear friends, dear colleagues, dear facebook! This is definitely my last post on facebook. I am going to leave the service after the new facebook terms of service came into force in Europe today. They don‘t care about German an European law. As former Federal German Data Protection Commissioner I will not and I cannot accept the company‘s continued disregard for data protection and user‘s privacy which are core values of the European ...

(This blog post was translated by EDPS - Many thanks - PSch) German version French version It is certainly nothing new to say that data protection and technology go hand in hand, but at least since information was leaked by Edward Snowden we have known that the technical weaknesses of digital information and communication systems are mercilessly exploited, and not only by criminals and rogue ...

By Peter Schaar (translated by Douwe Korff) This article is a free translation of my comment for the German news service Heise Online The judgment of the CJEU on compulsory data retention is remarkable for two reasons. First, the Court essentially agrees with the critics of data retention: The general, suspicionless retention of telecommunication data is incompatible with both ...