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On 11 April, the Senate adopted the Legea pentru protectia informatiilor clasificate (Act on the protection of classified information) in the version previously approved by Parliament (see IRIS 2001-5: 15). The Act was adopted as a matter of urgency and was signed by the President on the same day. The Act regulates access to information which is "classified" for reasons of defence, national security and law and order, or to which, as "classified information" of economic and political significance, access is restricted. The Act entered into force on 12 April, when it was published in the Monitorul...

On 8 April 2002, the Group of Specialists on On-line Services and Democracy, working under the auspices of the Council of Europe, released the first public version of a draft Declaration on freedom of communication on the Internet. The principal motivation for the elaboration of the draft Declaration was to guarantee freedom of expression and information on the new information and communication services. Other reasons can be found in the preamble to the draft Declaration. The draft Declaration consists of the following principles: Prior control should not be exercised by public authorities or...

Ireland's current Data Protection Act was passed in 1988, when the Internet and international data transfers were much more limited than today. At the end of 2001, the Minister for Justice signed the European Communities (Data Protection) Regulations, 2001. The regulations implement certain provisions of the EU Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) and are due to come into effect on 1 April 2002. Under the new regulations, transfers of data to countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA) cannot take place unless one of a number of clear conditions designed to protect people's privacy rights...

A man, who happens to be a TV presenter, went out for an evening of drinking with friends. He ended up in a brothel. A prostitute performed a sex act on him. Photographs were taken of him, drunk and partially undressed. The prostitute offered the story and photographs to the media (in this case a newspaper). The newspaper asked for his reaction. He sought an injunction against publication, on the ground that his right to privacy, inter alia, under Article 8 of the European Convention, would be breached. The High Court (Queen's Bench Division) upheld the claimant's application that publication...

An Internet Provider can refuse the sender of unsolicited commercial e-mail (also known as spam) the use of its transport facilities, because it does not have a universal service-connected legal duty to deliver. This was the judgment of the President of the Court of Amsterdam in the first-ever spam case in the Netherlands on 7 March 2002. XS4All, a Dutch Internet Provider, had applied for a temporary injunction. The injunction was sought against AbFab, a Dutch marketing company, which had sent unsolicited commercial e-mail messages to a number of XS4All subscribers. After receiving complaints...