Police spies targeting campaign groups across Europe are the focus of a European Parliament event on 6 September, where MEPs will hear from activists directly affected by undercover police, along with experts on state surveillance.

By Reporters Without Borders
The UK Government has failed to respond to widespread public dismay over secret mass surveillance revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. The Bill will not only put into statute the capabilities revealed by Snowden but extend surveillance even further. This is not just of grave concern for UK citizens. The impact of the Bill will be felt around the world. Authoritarian leaders with poor human rights records can now point to the UK when justifying their own surveillance regimes.

Eight women who were affected by relationships with undercover officers, and who started Police Spies Out of Lives, have issued the following statement in response to the draft new guidelines for undercover policing issued by the College of Policing. The guidelines are out for consultation until midnight August 10th 2016.

The Intercept has announced that it is broadening access to whistleblower Edward Snowden’s file archive.

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Justice of the European Union (CJEU) was to uphold the national data retention law, but rules on session logging were repealed.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 Thomas Lohninger, EDRi member Initiative, Netzfreiheit, Austria
In the midst of the biggest surveillance scandal of mankind and after years of criticism about rogue secret agencies spying on politicians and the government bodies supposed to control them, Austria is planning to establish a new secret agency.

By Kirsten Fiedler, EDRi
On 23 July, the French Constitutional Council approved sweeping surveillance powers for intelligence agencies. In its decision, the Council declared almost all provisions constitutional, in contradiction to vehement opposition from civil rights groups, human rights experts, academia and the online business sector. The “Loi Renseignement” (also dubbed the “French Patriot Act”) was passed by the French National Assembly on 24 June and allows intelligence agencies to tap phone and emails without judicial permission.

By David Swanson 
The thrust of Robert Scheer's new book, They Know Everything About You, is that the U.S. government’s mass surveillance and permanent storage of everything you do on the internet is piggybacking on Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, AOL, Yahoo, and other companies that suck up and permanently store every scrap of information about you that they can lay their virtual hands on—and that this data mining is driven primarily by the profit to be gained from carefully targeted advertising.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and  the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) have submitted to the Home Office a damning  critique of the proposed Code of Practice which would allow remote access to any computer anywhere in the world: NUJ and CIJ joint response to the interception of communications and equipment interference: draft codes of practice (pdf). Both express concern about the implications for press freedom if the UK intelligence and security agencies are permitted  to access journalist's computers remotely and break encryption codes (both inside and outside the UK)..

by Christopher Talib, La Quadrature du Net, France
In recent years, France has increasingly tightened its laws on crimes committed on the Internet. From the LOPPSI law voted in 2012 to the latest anti-terror law voted in November 2014, the bill on Intelligence announced on 19 March by the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, is fully consistent with a history of repressive Internet legislation.

By David Swanson
Cities and states across the United States have been taking various actions against drones, while the federal government rolls ahead with project fill the skies .

By Reporters Without Borders
A recent historic ruling by an independent British tribunal that handles complaints about surveillance has made it possible for individuals to ask the British signals intelligence agency GCHQ if it spied on them. Reporters Without Borders is inviting journalists, bloggers and online activists to participate in a campaign that will help them to discover whether they were the victims of illegal spying.

by Raegan MacDonald, EDRi-member
Over 30 digital and civil liberties organisations from around the world have endorsed a joint statement calling on the world’s governments not to expand surveillance measures in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. In addition to European Digital Rights (EDRi), signatories include Article19, digitalcourage, IT-pol, Vrijschrift, La Quadrature du Net, Panoptykon, Initiative für Netzfreiheit, FITUG e.V., Alternative Informatics Association, ORG, EFF, Effi, APTi, and Access.

On 21 January, only two weeks after the attacks in Paris, the French government announced a big bundle of new security measures, a “general mobilisation against terrorism”. But does the country need more surveillance?  

By Reporters Without Borders
Turkey’s national assembly passed two last-minute amendments today expanding the grounds under which the High Council for Telecommunications (TIB) can temporarily block websites without a court order, and allowing it to gather Internet user connection data independently of any ongoing investigation.

By David Swanson
Veterans For Peace in Boston, the late VFP member Howard Zinn, and several other peace organizations in Boston have been routinely spied on for years, and records kept on their peaceful and lawful activities. The Boston Police Department and the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, BRIC, (the local "fusion center") have collected and kept so-called "intelligence reports" documenting constitutionally protected speech and political activity. While not a single report refers to any engagement in or plans for violence, peace rallies are called "Criminal Acts," and the reports are labeled as dealing with "Extremists," "Civil Disturbance," and "HomeSec-Domestic."

The Centre for Irish & European Security (CIES) & Statewatch announces the following debate: ‘Democratic institutions can no longer govern modern communications and surveillance technology’ in Dublin on 1 October 2012.

From "The Intercept" by Glenn Greenwald based on Snowden leaks
The Intercept -the website setup by Glenn Greenwald and others this week publishes a new summary of intercept capabilities used by the NSA and Britain's GCHQ, this time covering how the intelligence agencies working on behalf of the surveillance state disrupt public discourse on the Internet and seek to control the Internet.