By Joe McNamee, EDRi
Since 2002, European citizens' freedom of communication, the security of our communications devices, and the protection of our personal data in the online world have been safeguarded by the so-called e-Privacy Directive.

By Jesper Lund, IT-Pol
When the EU data retention Directive was transposed into national law after its adoption in 2006, Denmark implemented one of the most excessive transpositions into national law. Danish Internet service providers (ISPs) were required to retain session information (source and destination IP addresses, port numbers, session type e.g. TCP or UDP, and timestamp) for every 500th internet packet. In June 2014, the response of the Danish government to the data retention judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) was to uphold the national data retention law, but rules on session logging were repealed. The Ministry of Justice could no longer argue for the necessity of session logging when, after seven years of collecting detailed information about internet usage for the entire population, the Danish Police could only point to a single case, involving web banking fraud on a minor scale, where this information had been useful.

By Joe McNamee, EDRi
Should we still be talking about “privacy” in a world invaded by bastard data? We all knew what privacy was when it came to our data. We had our names and addresses, we had our store cards, we had our medical records, we had our insurance, we had our travel tickets, and the list goes on. Some companies and government agencies had that data to carry out some specific tasks and these data needed to be protected to avoid misuse.

by Julian Hauser, EDRi intern
In 1776, John Adams wrote that it had been the British right to search houses without justification that sparked the fight for independence. In other words, John Adams thought that it had been an unjustified violation of privacy that had kindled one of history's most noteworthy revolutions.

The High Court in Dublin has asked the European Court of Justice sitting in Luxembourg to rule on a landmark case which seeks to force watchdogs to audit the personal data Facebook allegedly releases to US spy chiefs.