Corporate lobbying in the European union has long been recognised as a significant problem for citizens. Friends of the Earth and others organised the ‘Worst EU Lobby Awards’ which in 2006 voted that DG Internal Market provided the ‘worst priviliged access’ by manipulating a consultation on EU patent policies, including of course, software patents.
Of course, [...]

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News that Lord Carter will quit government in July raises serious questions about the future of the Digital Britain proposals, which are due to be released next Tuesday.
Minimum - if minimal - standards for broadband; hopefully, additional thinking about privacy online; and the controversial and much disliked Digital Rights Agency are all expected in the [...]

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Stand back from the media frenzy concentrating on Labour’s woes for a moment, and ask yourself what these elections mean for digital rights.
Several parties that broadly supported digital rights concerns did well in this election, including, in the UK, UKIP and the Greens. The Liberal Democrats also had a fair showing.
Across Europe, the Green Party [...]

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ORG is non-partisan, and the quality and chances of your candidates vary from region to region, so we are not recommending any party over another. Hopefully, the candidates’ pledges on key issues and their track records will help you decide who it’s best to vote for.
What is clear is that Labour have unfortunately refused to [...]

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Update: We have now had a reply for all Conservative candidates.
The Open Rights Group is publicising the positions of MEPs on several key digital rights issues that Europe will be legislating on. These include copyright, data retention, personal data and the open internet.
Around half of the candidates from the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP / Plaid [...]

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GeneWatch UK Press Release
GeneWatch UK today questioned the Home Office’s proposed delay in deleting innocent people’s DNA profiles from the police National DNA Database, following last year’s decision by the European Court of Human Rights. The Government has announced a consultation on proposals to delete innocent people’s computerised DNA records and fingerprints after 12 years [...]

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(This urgent call to action was originally posted by La Quadrature du Net)
ALERT: last minute trick to prevent European Parliament to vote on amendment 138/46 by changing the order of votes. A dedicated campaign page regarding the issue below has been put on the wiki, including arguments, counter-arguments, and advice on how to contact MEPs.
Paris, [...]

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You’ll probably have read today that leaked emails have shown that  the Home Office worked with Phorm to offer advice that would give “comfort” to their investors. We condemn this approach to law enforcement: the Home Office’s job is to uphold the law: not to reinterpret it for commercial interests.
It is extraordinary, when compared to [...]

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The government has announced a review of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
It may be a coincidence that this review has been announced days after Commissioner Reding said she intends to prosecute the UK for the inadequacies of this act.
But we fully expect the government to indicate their intention to address her concerns in [...]

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Wikipedia have announced that they are blocking Phorm as they
consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors’ behavior by a third party to be an infringement on their privacy.
We’d like to thank Wikipedia and Amazon for prioritising their users’ privacy and taking this stand. We hope Facebook, AOL, Bebo, MSN, Google and others can follow [...]

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