“Register your prepaid and get free calls/Internet transfer/win a car” – you can hear from Polish telecom operators, as a reminder and encouragement that all pre-paid SIM cards have to be registered by 1st of February 2017. One could almost think that this is just nicely coordinated campaign of leading telecoms, aimed at collecting a bit more data about their clients in exchange for a bonus. Nothing new under the sun in the data-driven world? Well, not exactly. A real stake in this data collection effort is to increase control over all users of telecommunication networks in Poland, with particular focus on foreigners. The demand for more data, this time, came not from the market but directly from the policing arm of the state.

Governments do not like being watched. Nevertheless, it has became common in developed democracies to support independent media and watchdog organisations, sometimes even with dedicated public funds. Wise governments know that listening to justified and neutral criticism is a way to survive past the next elections. The Polish government has clearly decided to follow another path.

Non-governmental organizations are warning that the overly broad language of the new EU Directive on Combating Terrorism could lead to criminalising public protests and other peaceful acts, to the suppression of the exercise of freedom of expression protected under international law, including expression of dissenting political views and to other unjustified limitations on human rights.

Katarzyna Szymielewicz, the president of Panoptykon Foundation, was recognized by Access Now as a Hero of Human Rights “for her diligent work