EU court moves to protect passengers' data privacy

Yesterday we saw how The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) gives his initial reactions to today's judgment of the Court of Justice in the two PNR-cases concerning the transfer of flight passenger's personal data to the US.

Here the Court of Justice of the European Communities' Press Release.

Here the full text of the judgment

In the news:

EU privacy ruling threatens chaos on flights to US Telegraph.co.uk
NO TO US PRIVACY INVASION OF FLIGHT PASSENGERS Mirror.co.uk
EU court moves to protect passengers' data privacy ABC Online
EU court bars giving passenger data to U.S. International Herald Tribune Europe

European Data Protection Supervisor's Press Release

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) gives his initial reactions to today's judgment of the Court of Justice in the two PNR-cases concerning the transfer of flight passenger's personal data to the US. The EDPS has used, for the first time in these cases, his powers to intervene before the Court in support of the Parliament.


Opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor on the Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on the organisation and content of the exchange of information extracted from criminal records between Member States (COM (2005)690 final).


LINKS:

EU Data protection: exchange of information from criminal records, an article by Eva Balla at BusinessUpdated.com

Daniel Weitzner

Daniel Weitzner is one of the instructors of MIT 6.805/6.806/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier Privacy and Transparency, (co-taught with Hal Abelson and Mike Fischer).

Daniel Weitzner is Director of the World Wide Web Consortium's Technology and Society activities.

Before joining the W3C, Mr. Weitzner was co-founder and Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a leading Internet civil liberties organization in Washington, DC. He was also Deputy Policy Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He serves on the Boards of Directors of the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Software Freedom Law Center, and the Internet Education Foundation.

Weitzner has recently published this paper about Accountable Data Mining and Privacy Protection: Weitzner, Abelson, Berners-Lee, Hanson, Hendler, Kagal, McGuinness, Sussman, Waterman, Transparent Accountable Data Mining: New Strategies for Privacy Protection,; MIT CSAIL Technical Report

Smart Card in Australia

Photo by UnaPersona

The Australian Federal Government is considering the move to avoid being swamped by millions of applicants when the new card comes on line in early 2008.

LINKS:

Australia's Privacy Commissioner's Website

The Australian Privacy Foundation


IN THE NEWS:

Fels appointed to oversee smart card privacy ZDNet.com.au

Australians to sign up early for smart card Townsville Bulletin

Watchdog for smartcard privacyAustralian

Privacy worries over web's future

Today BBC News publishes this article Privacy worries over web's future by Jonathan Fildes.

Hugh Glaser of the University of Southampton made the comments at the WWW2006 Conference in Edinburgh about how the next phase of the web could face "big privacy" issues.

Privacy problems could occur, he said, because the semantic web
deliberately combines multiple sources of information about people and places.