In her speech, Vice President Reding echoed several arguments CDT and other groups have made in our drive for surveillance and privacy reform. She pointed to the need to target and limit data collection for surveillance to what is strictly necessary and proportionate to the purpose. Quoting US Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, she stressed that current laws on surveillance data collection have not been updated to take into account today’s technological reality: ubiquitous Internet connectivity, plummeting data storage costs, and the powerful big data analytical capabilities that are now available to the intelligence community. Further, she called for national security exceptions in national legislation to be construed and interpreted narrowly, and for judicial oversight of intelligence programs to be beefed up substantially.
These are all points that CDT has called for in our push for comprehensive reform of intelligence laws and practices, both in the US and internationally.
In my remarks, I reiterated our call on Europe and the US to initiate a trans-Atlantic process to develop a comprehensive understanding of the criteria that should apply to government surveillance and especially to national security surveillance. As the European Parliament inquiry has amply demonstrated, the US and EU Member States need to bring greater transparency, proportionality and oversight to their electronic surveillance practices in order to ensure that human rights principles are respected in both jurisdictions. They also must jointly develop an agreement on what constitutes adequacy for government access to data.
CDT is determined to keep advocating for reform that brings intelligence practices in line with international human rights norms and rebuilds trust in the global, open Internet. There is a great deal of consensus on the principles for reform between civil society and industry, academics and experts. The challenge for both companies and civil society is to turn principles into concrete, detailed legislative reform proposals, and to find ways to implement them. That’s a hard challenge, but if stakeholders across countries drive the issue jointly, we have a fighting chance.
British Public Oppose Secret Surveillance Powers and Want Strong Protections for Encrypted Communications
CDT released nationally representative polling data revealing that a the British public are broadly concerned about the security, privacy, and free speech consequences of allowing law enforcement to access encrypted communications.
Responding to the EU-US Negotiations on Reciprocal Data Exchanges for Border Procedures
CDT Europe, together with 29 other civil society organisations and academics, sent an open joint letter to the Council of the EU regarding the worrying direction taken by the European Commission in the EU-US border negotiations with the U.S. government.
Open Joint Letter on a Public Reassessment of the EU-US Adequacy Decision
On 29 June, the US Supreme Court ruled that US President Trump can remove the leaders of independent agencies and commissions, overturning nearly 90 years of precedent limiting executive power. This decision raises serious questions about one of the key safeguards underpinning the EU-US Data Privacy Framework adopted in 2023: independent supervision.
Return of Mass Scanning of Private Communications through Undemocratic Procedure
CDT Europe responds to the European Parliament's vote to revive the interim derogation from the ePrivacy Directive, commonly known as “Chat Control 1.0”, which provides the legal basis for the voluntary, indiscriminate scanning of private communications for known and new Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), and for the solicitation of children.
