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On 31 May 2008, privacy activists organized new rallies in more than 30 cities across Germany.

Following the November 2007 protests under the motto "Freedom not Fear"("Freiheit statt Angst"), thousands of citizens participated in this year street actions.

Numerous demonstrations, rallies, information events, as well as workshops and art performances sent clear signals to protect constitutional rights and limit the rampant proliferation of surveillance.

The rallies had the goal of demonstrating to the ruling grand coalition, a decisive NO of citizens to the blanket collection and storage of data, as well as to the surveillance of all details of daily life. The activities were

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A report of the Home Affairs Committee shows concerns that Britain might be in danger of becoming a Big Brother type of state and calls on the UK ministers to take the necessary measures to provide safeguards and minimize the amount of the citizen's information collected and stored in databases.

The report shows concerns especially in relation to the ID card scheme that might be used to spy on people. "We are concerned about the potential for 'function creep' in terms of the surveillance potential of the national identity scheme. (...) Any ambiguity about the objectives of the scheme puts in jeopardy the public's trust in the scheme itself and in the government's ability to run it" says the Committee in its report.

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6 January 2008 was the 30th anniversary of the French Data Protection Act. But no one really cared. The only French contribution to this 2nd European DP day has been the publication by the CNIL (French DP Authority) of a poll result that it commissioned in November 2007. The poll indicates that 50% of the asked persons know the CNIL. However, only 26% of them feel they are informed well enough on their rights in terms of personal data protection, and 61% consider that the constitution of databases is breaching their right to privacy. Moreover, a former study on Internet usages conducted in June 2007 reveals that the mostly cited barrier to Internet use is the fear that personal data are not protected enough (by 29% of the Internet users and 23%

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Last year has seen an increased number attempts from government bodies to extend their powers and make it easier to access people's private information. To name a few, there were legal proposals to increase the number of agencies authorized to access and process electronic communication data collected by telecommunication companies under the Data Retention law, national DNA database enlargement, plans for various administrative database sharing, introduction of even more CCTV systems and the pressure on air travel operators to share records about their passengers. The introduction of biometric into travel documents data as a mean of identification and the use of contactless chip technologies

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a. Data Retention - a reality

15 September 2007 - data retention became a reality in Denmark. The administrative order, which sets the scope and conditions for data retention, was approved on 28 September 2006 with an implementation deadline of one year. The order, which was drafted by the Ministry of Justice, had been underway for more than four years. The Act providing for data retention was approved by the Danish Parliament already in June 2002 as part of the Danish "anti-terrorism package," which extended the scope of Section 786 of the Administration of Justice Act (Act No. 378 of 6 June 2002).

The administrative order regulates in more details the obligations of the

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UK-based human rights group Privacy International (PI) published at the end of last year the 2007 ranking assessment of the state of privacy in 47 countries, including all European Union member states.

The raking is based on the Privacy & Human Rights reports produced since 1997 by PI together with US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and is taking into consideration several criteria such as constitutional & statutory protection and privacy enforcement, biometric ID cards, data-sharing, video surveillance, communication interceptions and data retention.

According to the authors, the project wants to "recognize countries in which privacy protection and respect for privacy is nurtured. This is done in the

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During Infolaw legal forum on 17 October, Margot Artner, a Viennese lawyer, expressed concerns regarding the existence of about 100 000 illegal monitoring systems with recording functions in Austria. The estimation was based on information obtained from vendors of monitoring software and installing technicians.

Artner has waited for seven months in order to obtain from the data protection commission the first permit for the operation of the video monitoring system. The conditions required by the commission include the deletion of records after 48h and the limitation of the access to the recordings to only qualified staff that would have to work in pairs.

The only previous permit had been given to Wiener Linien (Vienna's public

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The European Commission (EC) has adopted a green paper on surveillance technology used by the civil society in the fight against terrorism, that will be open for public consultation until the end of this year.

The green paper, resulted from a public conference (Public-Private Security Dialogue: Detection Technologies and Associated Technologies in the Fight against Terrorism) that took place in November 2005, is meant to find the best technologies to be used "in the service of the security of its citizens" as was stated by European Commission Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security.

Some of the issues on which the green paper is focused are: standardisation,

On May 10 2006, a public hearing was held in the Danish Parliament on a new proposal for an anti-terror act including surveillance measures. The proposed law may increase camera surveillance, obliges carriers to store passenger data for one year and introduces new measures for the intelligence service. According to the proposal, the intelligence service may obtain personal data from other authorities regardless of whether there may be specific considerations for not forwarding the data (such as professional secrecy). Data may be obtained regardless of whether there is a specific suspect or the intelligence service wish to investigate all individuals having done something specific such as passing by a certain location or borrowing a certain book from the library. This is a measure which has

Teachers protest against the installation of 50 CCTV systems with microphones in UK schools, used as surveillance measures by the school management.

While observation in class was supposed to help teachers in improving their performances, the headmasters, who have also used two-way mirrors to survey the teachers, grade them according to the way they perform in class under observation.

TES (The Times Educational Supplement) reported on 7 April that teachers were being "observed to death" and that surveillance was being used more like a punishment. Observed lessons are often graded on a scale of outstanding to poor.

The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), the largest teachers' union in UK, has proposed a conference motion to use "all means necessary" to stop the "yet another example of management