Report Data Retention in Poland: The issue and the Fight This paper is aims to give a brief overview of the following issues: (i) Polish data retention regime and its drawbacks; (ii) the use of data retention in practice and available data on the subject; (iii) campaign run by the Panoptykon Foundation over last two years; and (iv) political shifts that occurred in Poland. 05.08.2012 Text
Article Belgian authority finds IAB Europe’s consent pop-ups incompatible with the GDPR Following a number of complaints filed in 2018 and 2019, including by Panoptykon and Bits of Freedom, and coordinated by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Belgian Data Protection Authority has found that the consent system developed and managed by the adtech industry body IAB Europe, and used by many websites in the EU, is illegal under the GDPR. 16.02.2022 Text
Article Hide and Seek: Polish DPA agrees that people should be able to access their advertising profiles, but there’s no way to do so Following Panoptykon’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) complaint against one of the biggest Polish news website, Interia.pl – the Polish Data Protection Authority has confirmed that online publishers should give users access to their advertising profiles generated for the purposes of delivering behavioural ads. 24.01.2022 Text
Article Polish law on “protecting the freedoms of social media users” will do exactly the opposite Polish government’s proposal for a new law on “protecting free speech of social media users” introduces data retention, a new, questionable definition of “unlawful content”, and an oversight body (Free Speech Council) that is likely to be politically compromised. In this context, “Surveillance and Censorship Act” would be a more accurate name. 10.02.2021 Text
Article 9 controversies about obligatory prepaid registration “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. 31.01.2017 Text