Germany's privacy preoccupation

Can Germans convince other Europeans to feel as strongly about data privacy as they do? A new documentary tries to make the case.

Last night I attended the Berlin premier of Democracy, a documentary about the European Union's proposed data privacy regulation. The director, David Bernet, has been following the main actors involved in the legislation since it was first proposed in January 2012.

The film strives to be a call-to-arms for Europe as a whole, drawing attention to the threat posed by data surveillance and the current make-or-break moment for this legislation which would put controls on snooping. It opens and closes with shots of the Parthenon in Athens, with an ominous-looking government helicopter flying overhead. The not-so-subtle message: all democracy is under threat from unrestrained data surveillance.

But despite the pan-European scenes, the film seems to be coming from a very German perspective on these issues. And as somewhat of a privacy-sceptic, I came away feeling that while film told me what is happening with the legislation, it didn't tell me why I should support it.

Europe’s SOPA?

The European Parliament’s website has been shut down by hackers today, allegedly in a denial-of-service attack from Anonymous in protest of imminent anti-piracy legislation restricting internet freedom. But as the IT folks in parliament scramble to fix the problem, the functionaries are sitting around scratching their heads in confusion. Did we pass internet piracy legislation?

Their confusion is warranted. By all accounts the EU has been on the internet-freedom-lovers side during this debate. During the fallout from the Wikipedia ‘blackout’ last week, US politicians weren’t the only ones beating a path to the door to distance themselves from the now toxic SOPA legislation on internet piracy. On Friday the EU’s Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes tweeted that she was “glad the tide is turning on #SOPA,” adding “speeding is illegal too: but you don't put speed bumps on the motorway”.

Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström also tweeted against the US legislation, noting that ‘sopa’ in Swedish means garbage. Notably, no public statements about the US anti-piracy bills had been made before the Wikipedia blackout. It’s quite unusual for the EU to make comments about US legislation. But such was the effect of the blackout – which was, after all, global (Eurocrats felt quite helpless without Wikipedia last week!), that even politicians not involved in US lawmaking felt the need to make a statement about it.

Why aren't Germans on Facebook?

I stumbled across an interesting project the other day, mapping out the penetration of Facebook in different countries around the world. It's amazing to see how something that just a few years ago was a small networking site for college students has become a worldwide force which has signed up more than half the population in several developed countries.

In Europe the geographic trend is pretty clear to see – Northern Europeans are the most likely to be on Facebook, which Eastern Europeans are the least likely. Iceland has the highest level of Facebook penetration, with 59% of its population signed up to the site. The UK and Denmark are tied for second place, each with 45% of their population signed up. This is more than in the homeland of Facebook – 42% of Americans have a profile on the site.

The lowest level of Facebook usage within the EU is in Latvia, with just 6% of people using the site. Next is Poland with 8%. And in third to last place comes, hang on – Germany? It's true, only 13% of Germans have a profile on Facebook.

EU to create "right to be forgotten"

As the public's concern over internet privacy violations on sites like Facebook continues to grow, the EU unveiled new proposals yesterday to give people more control over how their online personal data is collected and used. The new update to EU privacy laws would oblige service providers to make personal information and user-supplied content easily and quickly deletable. Citing the effect such information can have on a person's professional and private life, the European Commission says the issue is important enough to take EU-wide action. The commission says it has even received complaints from its own staff about Facebook's privacy policy. And that must be a big deal, because most of the people I know who work for the commission are on Facebook all day!

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the proposal is that it would create a new right for EU citizens, a so-called "right to be forgotten." The original EU data protection rules date back to 1995, when such issues of online privacy did not yet exist. In theory the right to control over one's own personal stored information is already enshrined in EU law, but the commission said yesterday its applicability to the online world has been patchy and unclear.

Move over Somalia, Sarko's after the cyber-pirates Now

My twitter erupted with activity yesterday as news spread that the French lower house had at long last passed the much-maligned Hadopi bill, the hugely controversial legislation that would ban people from using the internet if they are caught repeatedly downloading files illegally.

This was the third attempt to pass the measure, but the third time was the charm and since it’s already passed the French senate, Sarkozy’s piracy-busting measure will now become law. It will be the toughest anti-internet piracy legislation in the world. The slow journey of this legislation has been closely watched by other European countries and now that the precedent has been set, they will now likely enact their own similar laws.

The bill, named after the new anti-piracy government agency it will create, would permit authorities to impose a variety of penalties on people caught downloading illegally including cutting off their internet connection for a year, imposing fines of hundreds of thousands of euros, and even jailing them for two years.