On 22 June, Polish president signed a new anti-terrorism law. The law contains measures that are inconsistent with the Polish Constitution and with the European Convention on Human Rights. The list of controversies is long: foreigners’ phone calls might be wire-tapped without a court order, and police might collect their fingerprints, biometric photos and DNA if their identity is “doubtful”. Online content might be blocked, citizens' freedom of assembly limited, and secret services are given free access to all public databases.

We have taken part in the public consultations of the draft code of conduct which is supposed to help apply the GDPR to the internet advertising sector. The code was prepared by the Polish office of the Internet Advertising Bureau.

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.

Data retention obligation will not be further extended in Polish law on electronic communication. However, the current, unlawful scope of telecommunication data retention remains unchanged. Our advocacy effort proved successful.