“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!

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.

On 9 and 10 November 2010 the representatives of the EDRi-member Panoptykon Foundation met with the representatives of the European Commission in order to discuss the evaluation of the Data Retention Directive (DRD) and the rationale behind the regime of blanket data retention