On Friday 13rd March, a meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA) was held in Brussels. During this meeting, the EU Member States expressed their views on data protection regulation, “one stop shop” mechanism and other issues. Ministers agreed that the “one stop shop” mechanism should only play a role in important cross-border…
Category: Freedom of information
#jenesuispascharlie in Malta
Lino Farrugia, the CEO of the Maltese Federation for Hunting & Conservation (FKNK) – by the way I think they should rename their federation – has sent following letter to “daddy” parliament secretrary Jose Herrera complaining on the posts on Facebook of two elected local councilors: On 21 Jan 2015, at 21:13, “[email protected]”…
The Chinese Connections
This week, the Maltese government will be signing a medium-term cooperation agreement with China in Beijing. The Maltese delegation will be accompanied by some Maltese journalists to witness the event. The interest of the labour government to renew past cooperations with China seem rather strange and obscur. Indeed, the fact that the goverment refused to…
Who is eyesdropping on Maltese citizens?
In the view of yesterday’s Vodafone’ s revelation of the existence of secret wires allowing government agencies to listen to all conversations on its networks, Alternattiva Demokratika, the Green Party of Malta, is requesting immediate clarification from the government and Vodafone Malta. Vodafone International said wires had been connected directly to its network and those…
EU missed opportunity to introduce EU wide Data Protection Laws
Google, Facebook and other US tech giants have won an important victory against EU efforts to restrict the sharing of customer data after UK Prime Minister David Cameron persuaded the bloc to postpone the introduction of tougher privacy rules by at least a year. This a blow to advocates of stricter data protection standards, especially…
Facebook no more…
New research shows Facebook has lost a total of 11 million users in 2013. Researchers at the University of Vienna analyzed 600 users and found they quit for reasons like privacy concerns, general dissatisfaction, shallow conversations and fear of becoming addicted. Facebook developed a following because it allowed people to connect with friends more easily,…
On Prism..
While law enforcement authorities need a warrant to search private property, the US government had authorized illegal violations of citizens’ privacy in the name of the fight against terrorism. The EU governments need to protect the data of their citizens. I fully support the European Parliament’s Green Group President Daniel Cohn Bendit’s proposal to suspend…
What is happening in Istanbul?
I warmly suggest the reading of the following blog relating about the current events in Istanbul. http://defnesumanblogs.com/2013/06/01/what-is-happenning-in-istanbul/
ACTA – AD asks for private members’ bill
Alternattiva Demokratika – the Green Party, rebutted the statement of the Finance Minister that ACTA will not censor websites. AD also appealed for a private members’ bill on the issue. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was created with the aim of establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement, yet will deal with tools targeting…
EU-US agreement regulating the access of EU financial data
The EU Commission and the US government are currently finalizing the new SWIFT agreement on bank data transfers from Europe to U.S. authorities. The previous agreement had been stopped by the European Parliament in February in a historic and bold move, because it was in severe breach of fundamental rights such as privacy, due process…