Today is the 10th European Data Protection Day, which marks the adoption of the first international document on the personal data protection. On this occasion Human Rights Monitoring Institute presents the review of the most significant data protection episodes which took place in 2015.
Four months ago the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Estonian news portal Delfi to be liable for anonymous and insulting comments posted by third parties. Even though Delfi was not the author of these comments, the Grand Chamber agreed with Estonian courts and confirmed that Delfi did not take timely measures to remove hate speech and violence inciting remarks, hence the company was obliged to pay damages to the victim.
Do you remember the fight between the young Austrian lawyer Max Schrems and Facebook? Several days ago M. Schrems's achieved his first victory: the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the US does not ensure sufficient protection of Europeans' personal data, therefore the "Safe Harbor" agreement, which has simplified data transfers to the US companies, was invalidated.
On the 30th of June, European politicians agreed that, since June 15, 2017, roaming charges will not be applied in the EU any longer. In this way, for instance, Lithuanians will pay the same price for calls, SMS and mobile Internet both in Lithuania and abroad. Politicians have also promised that strict rules on Net neutrality will be adopted very soon, which together with the removal of roaming charges are incorporated in the Digital Single Market reform called "Connected Continent: Building a Telecoms Single Market".
Imagine China: a student called Ming from the Peking University attends a huge demonstration against the Chinese government. In the evening he writes a post on his blog about the event and shares his post on the social network Renren. He also sends all information by email to his friend, who lives in London. Unfortunatelly, the email does not reach his friend and his attempts to sign in to his blog fail. Chinese search engine Baidu cannot find the link to Ming's blog either, and his account on Renren becomes unavailable. What has happened with Ming's information? Why cannot he reach it on the Internet?