Neelie Kroes is the Vice-President of the European Commission. The following was her address today at the Centre for European Policy Studies: Thank you for inviting me today. Online privacy and online business need to go hand in hand. Privacy is a fundamental right; if your idea doesn’t work with that, it won’t work at…
EU steps back from insistence that ‘do not track’ standard is cookie-law compliant
Web browser ‘do not track’ functions will not, on their own, allow website operators to comply with EU rules on ‘cookies’, an EU Commissioner has admitted. Neelie Kroes, who is responsible for the EU’s Digital Agenda, acknowledged that website owners will still need to obtain consent to use cookies even if web users have ‘do…
Government of Malta proposes inclusion of digital rights in Constitution
Francesca Vella reports: The government has presented a White Paper proposing the inclusion of digital rights in the Constitution as a means of introducing new rights to internet access, accessing information online, online freedom of expression, and the right to informational self-determination […] On the right to privacy, the White Paper refers to the introduction…
President’s bioethics panel urges new privacy protection to ensure benefits from DNA decoding
Lauran Neergaard of Associated Press reports: It sounds like a scene from a TV show: Someone sends a discarded coffee cup to a laboratory where the unwitting drinker’s DNA is decoded, predicting what diseases lurk in his or her future. A presidential commission found that’s legally possible in about half the states — and says…