EDRi, Panoptykon Foundation and Access expressed their concern regarding the proposed Directive on EU Passenger Name Record. In current form, the proposal poses the risk of discrimination e.g. on religious grounds. Moreover, the proposal will bring significant costs to Member states. And all these with lack of evidence that such measures are effective in prevention of serious crimes.

With almost two million requests for telecommunication data and more than two thousand requests for Internet data concerning Polish citizens in 2015, it is clear that the access to metadata in Poland by the country’s secret services is still out of control.

The draft of the Polish Anti-terrorism Law was published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration on April 21st, 2016. Panoptykon Foundation believes that the proposed law contains certain measures that are inconsistent with the Polish Constitution and with the European Convention on Human Rights. In fact, discriminatory treatment of foreigners (including other EU nationals) is at the very essence of the proposal. Regardless of the criticism coming from inside and outside of the country, the government wants the new law to enter into force on June 1, 2016.

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

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.