EU member states laid aside the advice of their own legal experts in cutting MEPs out of talks on a new bank data deal with the US. The legal services of the EU council (the member states’ secretariat in Brussels) in July put forward a confidential paper saying that the European Parliament should have co-legislative…
Category: Surveillance
UK’s national ID card unveiled
Home Secretary Alan Johnson has unveiled the final design of the controversial national identity card. The card will be offered to members of the public in the Greater Manchester area from the end of this year. Ministers plan to launch the £30 biometric ID Card nationwide in 2011 or 2012 – but it will not…
Council denies snooping through families’ bins
Contractors have been sorting through Salisbury householders’ rubbish to check whether they are recycling enough. But Wiltshire Council denies they were prying or invading people’s privacy. It says they were simply carrying out surveys to assess what was being thrown away in general, and not examining what was in any single bin. The former Salisbury…
Camera law irks Greek privacy watchdog
Greece’s privacy watchdog yesterday slammed an amendment, recently passed in Parliament, which paves the way for authorities to use surveillance cameras without restrictions, saying that it provides no safeguards governing how personal data will be handled. The Hellenic Data Protection Authority (APPD) has been locked in a dispute with the government and the police since…