“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.

How many times did the public institutions reach out for the data concerning our telecommunication activities (dial records, etc.) in 2011? Over 1,85 million!

On June 4, 2014, one day before the anniversary of the Snowden revelations, Poland celebrates 25 years since the fall of an authoritarian regime. On this occasion, President Obama is visiting Poland and meeting with many heads of states—including officials who were affected by the mass surveillance scandal carried out by the NSA. Since October 2013, the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish NGO, has tried to understand the relationship between the Polish and United States’ secret service organizations. Panoptykon believes that the Polish government, by accepting mass and pre-emptive surveillance, is reverting back to the much contested practices of the former, authoritarian regime — practices that triggered the revolution 25 years ago. Thus, the NGO has organized a user-generated campaign for June 4, urging people to welcome President Obama to Poland by vocalizing their thoughts on mass surveillance.

Civic Democracy Watch, a joint initiative by a group of Polish NGOs dedicated to protecting human rights, the rule of law and transparency in Poland has been officially launched.

The Polish DPA decided that Panoptykon’s complaints against IAB Europe and Google, who are responsible for the functioning of targeted advertising, have a cross-border character, which means that they affect data subjects residing not only in Poland. In order to ensure a consistent application of the GDPR in the entire European Union, the Polish DPA referred our complaints to DPAs in Belgium and in Ireland where IAB and Google respectively have their European headquarters. This gives hope for a systemic change of how behavioural advertising works in the entire EU.