The Blog of the European Association for Digital Transition
How to incorporate the current rights framework into the digital environment? And how to protect these rights in this area? The Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs attempts to answer these two questions in what has been titled the Digital Rights Charter, which it presents as part of its ‘España Digital 2025’ plan. This is a document whose purpose is to guide future policy decisions and actions by public authorities.
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When the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications back in 2017, it probably had no idea of the conflict to come. Better known as the ePrivacy Directive, the proposed legislation simply aims to update protections of the fundamental right of EU citizens to privacy and confidentiality when using public communications networks. And it’s finally due to come into effect on 21 December.
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On November 11, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) published some “Recommendations” – in two parts – in response to the Schrems II ruling of July 16, 2020. This extremely important decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidates the current international data transfers framework in the European Union and United States, considering that the rights of EU citizens are unprotected.
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Following a trade union complaint, the Labour Inspectorate of the Spanish government has just officially registered 4,056 delivery people who were working for Amazon as false freelancers in Madrid and Barcelona. In addition, it is demanding the U.S. company pay 6.16 million euros in unpaid contributions.
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The short-video application TikTok, a phenomenon among teenagers, is the new battleground in the digital cold war between China and the United States. The Trump administration considers TikTok to be a Trojan horse that the Beijing regime is using to collect data from thousands of Americans, data that would be used for espionage.
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Important debates on the future of work have been on the agenda of politicians and legislators for some time. But now that the EU has come through the worst of the pandemic, new nuances have been added. Acceleration of the digitalization process over the past three months, with massive use of telecommuting, is creating new challenges. And this also compounds the risks for the most vulnerable citizens, such as older workers and freelancers who rely heavily on technology platforms.
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When the EU territory slowly recovers its activity following the worst weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, the debate on using applications as tools to control possible new outbreaks will still be open. As we have already discussed in this blog, there are basically two schools of thought when it comes to processing the data created by these apps – centralised and decentralised – but what really has drawn attention from the media, politicians and experts is the role in these tools played by Apple and Google, who have offered to collaborate with the institutions.
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The severity of the coronavirus pandemic not only reminds us of the real meaning of the internet: it is also putting discussions on the table that the EU did not consider having just a few weeks ago. The technological ability to track the footsteps of its citizens, facing an expanding disease that is countered with social isolation, is a huge temptation for EU governments. And, with tens of thousands of deaths throughout the EU, it would be incomprehensible to completely dispense of a tool capable of combating the virus.
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On February 19, 2020, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, fulfilled one of the promises she made when taking her position: to publish a White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the first 100 days of her mandate. With this text, open for public consultation until May 19, 2020, the European Union clarifies its general outlines to face one of the greatest challenges of our time: To get the best possible results from Artificial Intelligence without leaving anyone behind or harming liberties and civil rights.
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