PPBe topic : PRIVACY
Wiki page including the projects, documentation and events related to this topic.
[FR] Les Pirates défendent la vie privée. Ils se battent contre la montée de l'Etat policier, qui entrave l'émancipation de l'individu. Une société libre et démocratique n'est pas possible sans espace privé.
[NL] Piraten beschermen privacy. Piraten vechten tegen de oprukkende surveillance- en controlestaat, omdat deze de vrije ontwikkeling van het individu belemmert. Een vrije en democratische samenleving is onmogelijk zonder private en onbespiede vrije ruimte.
Nous venons de recevoir une requête de la part d'étudiantes IHECS qui souhaitent nous interviewer (filmer) pour leur mémoire qui est un web documentaire portant sur la protection des données personnelles sur le web. Plus spécifiquement, la capsule pour laquelle nous sommes sollicités : "l'utilisation des données dans le cadre des campagnes politiques (et plus particulièrement du ciblage politique d'électeurs potentiels). Nous aimerions avoir votre avis sur ces pratiques"
Y a-t-il des volontaires dans la salle ?
Renaud Van Eeckhout Wed 8 Dec 2021 4:14PM
Hello, just some updates about privacy:
Belgium is under scrutiny of the European Commission for issues around APD/GBA. Indeed, the lack of independence of some members is problematic (namely the president David Stevens), and there is an illegal situation about the presence of Frank Robben in the APD/GBA. These issues need to be solved by 12/01/2022 otherwise Belgium faces fines for breaching GDPR, which would make our country the first one to face such fine. Instead, the Parliament, which is the only one to have the authority to solve it, decided to put "everyone" at APD/GBA under scrutiny, including the 2 directors who blew the whistle 1 year ago about these unacceptable problems. Today, one of these 2 whistleblowers refused to be accused and to justify herself, and resigned.
In the magazine "Visie" of 2 December (page 9), Frank Vandenbroucke said the following words : "We constantly had to fight against a fundamentalism around privacy". I think protecting our privacy is the most basic thing to do and respecting the laws protecting it is the least we can expect from our authorities.
Jelle Debusscher Sat 23 Oct 2021 8:38AM
Email received from Marc Van Treuren (PPNL) : Hallo Piratenpartij Vlaanderen, Gisteren werd ik benaderd door de voorzitter van Solar2024 toen ik op bezoek was in Belgie. Hun partij in oprichting is jaren bezig met procedures tegen de slimme meter die onder anderen de privacy schenden in Belgie en zoekt bondgenoten. Zij zien in de Piratenpartij mogelijkheden tot samenwerking. Zij vroegen aan mij om jullie te benaderen om een aanzet tot een ontmoeting te starten. Het gaat om ene Erwin van Loo. Wellicht is het een idee om contact met hem op te nemen om te zien of er samenwerking mogelijk is. Jullie kunnen hem bereiken per mail: [email protected] ondersteuning van jullie ontmoeting en versterken van jullie kennis omtrent de slimme meter verteld in deze Nederlandse documentaire wat er met de data gebeurt van burger die vergaren wordt door onder anderen de slimme meter in binnen- en buitenland.https://www.npostart.nl/vpro-tegenlicht/18-10-2020/VPWON_1310213Mvg,Mark van TreurenVoorzitterPiratenpartij Nederland
Renaud Van Eeckhout Fri 22 Oct 2021 11:26AM
Emai received from the office of Patrick Breyer, MEP (sorry I didn't see the first email, only their reminder today). Let's discuss it if someone is interested (please don't go there representing us without doing that before)
Dear all, Even after countless attempts have been struck down by the European courts, the European Commission and some of the EU member states are holding on to the idea to introduce measures of data retention in the Union. In July, the Commission published a "non-paper" considering the legal options to introduce the indiscriminate retention of user data in some form or another (see here: https://www.statewatch.org/media/2592/eu-council-data-retention-com-non-paper-wk-7294-2021.pdf )We do not want to let this happen. Before the Commission even starts drafting new legislation on data retention laws, we need to speak up! That is why we want to launch an EU-wide campaign against data retention as a common effort of all European Pirate Parties interested in collaborating on this. This means that we want to join our forces to raise awareness on this topic together with civil society organisations in the EU member states. We need to make clear that EU citizens do not want their data to be retained and that this practice is incompatible with our fundamental rights.
Therefore, we invite you to join our first Data Retention Campaign coordination call on 28 October 2021 at 18:00 CET. In this initial call, we will invite representatives of all European Pirate Parties to join forces to mobilise against data retention members in their national contexts and on the EU level.
If you are interested in joining this meeting, please send us an email to [email protected] and we will forward the connection details to you. Also feel free to forward this invitation to interested Pirates. Please help us reach the right people by forwarding this message to them! We are specifically missing contact data from Pirates in Spain and Poland.
Let us know if you have any questions. You can find an overview of the data retention legislation in the EU and the (never-ending) fight against it here: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/data-retention/
Renaud Van Eeckhout Wed 9 Jun 2021 10:19AM
Today, the European Commission announced the opening of an infringement procedure against Belgium because of the issue I mentioned yesterday, namely the lack of independence of some members of APD/GBA.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/fr/inf_21_2743
So... no witch hunt by le Soir. Belgium had the opportunity to justify themselves to the Commissioner Didier Reynders in April and couldn't dismiss these accusations.
Renaud Van Eeckhout Tue 8 Jun 2021 7:56PM
The Belgian Cour des Comptes/Rekenhof made an audit about our Autorité des Protections des Données/Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit and it's clear: the APD/GBA is not functioning properly. It doesn't even have enough funding to do its missions. And mentions the issue about the (non-)independance of some members, understand Frank Robben.
Source (in french) : https://plus.lesoir.be/375781/article/2021-06-02/la-cour-des-comptes-enfonce-le-clou-lapd-ne-tourne-pas-rond
The Service des Affaires juridiques de la Chambre/Dienst Juridische Zaken van de Kamer also made a report about the legal issues surrounding the nomination of Frank Robben. Their conclusion is very clear: it's illegal. Robben shouldn't have been nominated in the APD/GBA and, should he be maintained, the State faces legal issues in civil courts.
Source (in french) : https://plus.lesoir.be/376655/article/2021-06-07/letat-pourrait-etre-condamne-sil-maintient-frank-robben-lapd
Reminder : PPBe demands since months the resignation of Frank Robben.
-french : https://fr.pirateparty.be/communique-les-pirates-de-belgique-exigent-la-demission-de-frank-robben/
-dutch : https://nl.pirateparty.be/persbericht-belgische-piraten-eisen-het-ontslag-van-frank-robben/
Renaud Van Eeckhout Sat 13 Mar 2021 11:54AM
I wouldn't discard it as some "witch hunt". Firstly, because investigative journalism should be respected (even if everyone can make mistakes) and this piece by Le Soir is only one from many other information pieces published by them in the last months about the mishandling of our privacy by public authorities. Secondly, because other journalists have come out about Robben too, some since years already. The victim card played by Robben is a useful tactic to try to distract our attention.
Le Soir maintains its accusation https://plus.lesoir.be/360063/article/2021-03-10/profiler-les-belges-le-gouvernement-en-defense-des-parlementaires-lattaque
Mathieu Michel ordered this project to be stopped immediately https://plus.lesoir.be/360296/article/2021-03-11/vie-privee-mathieu-michel-annonce-larret-du-projet-de-croisement-des-donnees-des
This comes in a context where even the European Commission is threatening Belgian authorities about how privacy is neglected : https://www.ln24.be/2021-03-10/donnees-personnelles-la-commission-met-la-belgique-en-garde
In this case, maybe you're right, maybe it's a witch hunt like you said. But I don't give the benefit of the doubt to Robben anymore. If a journalist says (and details) there is a problem with Robben, I believe the journalist.
Christophe Cop Fri 12 Mar 2021 11:39AM
=> seems there is indeed some "fight" going on. Difficult to discern the facts from the opinions and insinuations.
As I did work for smals for 2 years (around 2016), I did contact a former colleague, and he sees this as a with hunt by "le soir".
I will have a meeting with them, to put SOLID on the table. I hope smals will put it on their radar and agenda, as Flanders and Belgium will continue to take the lead on this "data under control of the citizens" initiative.
Renaud Van Eeckhout Wed 10 Mar 2021 7:55AM
Le Soir doesn't give up on Frank Robben and reveals today a project built inside Smals (the huge IT non-profit led by Robben), project that aims at centralizing all data belonging to citizens : health, fiscal, social, justice...
It's called "Putting Data at the Center" (PDC). It already exists. It will be accessible to private partners.
There is no legal framework for that, they have no mandate. It's completely out of control. It seems they have been pushed back by State Security, probably the federal service who knows the most about IT?) when they tried to take a copy of a database.
It would be nice to remind (once more) our position on this :
https://fr.pirateparty.be/communique-les-pirates-de-belgique-exigent-la-demission-de-frank-robben/
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https://nl.pirateparty.be/persbericht-belgische-piraten-eisen-het-ontslag-van-frank-robben/
https://plus.lesoir.be/359783/article/2021-03-10/vie-privee-un-projet-sans-controle-de-letat-pour-profiler-les-belges (send me a private message if you can't access the content)
Renaud Van Eeckhout Sat 20 Feb 2021 8:16PM
More news about covid and how Belgian authorities don't care about our privacy :
Medispring, cooperative society that develops health software, wrote a letter to the government complaining that, because of how bad privacy is handled, their doctors will be forced to make a choice :
- either the doctors handle the private data of the patients to vaccinate them... and face legal issues because the privacy is not guaranteed
- or they don't and some patients might not get the treatment because their privacy is not guaranteed
https://plus.lesoir.be/356318/article/2021-02-20/vaccination-2000-medecins-denoncent-les-derives-graves-en-matiere-de-vie-privee
Renaud Van Eeckhout · Tue 8 Feb 2022 3:05PM
You might have seen the news today, but Frank Robben has left the APD/GBA. Apparently, if he didn't do that, the European Commission would have officially sent a complaint to the European Court of Justice today.
This resignation was one of our demands that we expressed almost 2 years ago already (in French, in Dutch). There are still internal problems at APD/GBA for which a procedure in the Parliamente has been opened and Mathieu Michel is proposing a law to change its way of working too. Robben still has various mandates including one at the CSI/IVC that are problematic.
Articles about Robben resignation :
https://www.hln.be/nieuws/topambtenaar-frank-robben-neemt-ontslag-bij-gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit~a5ab8640/
https://www.rtbf.be/article/frank-robben-demissionne-de-son-poste-a-l-autorite-de-protection-des-donnees-10930261