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The Court of First Instance in Brussels has ordered Facebook to stop tracking users on third-party sites, and to destroy all similar data it has illegally collected thus far. The judgment is the latest in a long-running legal battle between the Belgian Privacy Commission and Facebook. The former started court proceedings against the social network site in 2015, when a study revealed that Facebook tracked non-users and logged out users for advertising purposes through “data cookies” on external websites (“third-party tracking”). Summary proceedings resulted in a judgment by the Brussels Court of...

In the light of the General Data Protection Regulation, which will become directly applicable on 25 May 2018 and will replace the Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC) and the Police Directive (2016/680/EU), the EU Commission issued a Communication aimed at guiding all relevant actors in their preparations vis-à-vis this new legal instrument. The Communication first provides an overview of the main legal changes, in terms of rights and obligations, which will be brought about by the Regulation. It then lists the different initiatives that have already been taken at EU level in view of the coming...

On 1 March 2018, the European Commission issued a Recommendation on measures to effectively tackle illegal content online. The Recommendation addresses the need for IT companies and member states to put in place a series of operational measures for the effective removal of illegal content, as well as necessary safeguards intended to protect users’ fundamental rights. This Recommendation should be seen in the light of the Communication of September 2017 on tackling illegal content online, in which the Commission emphasised the increasing responsibility of Internet intermediaries in the countering...

On 5 February 2018, the Conclusion and Recommendations from the Internet Freedom Conference 2017 were published. The event was co-organised by Austrian Chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the Czech Chairmanship of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers. The conference was entitled "Internet Freedom: The Role and Responsibilities of Internet Intermediaries", and was held in Austria in October 2017. The four sessions of the conference concerned four interrelated questions: the current state of Internet freedom across the participating states...

On 13 February 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued its judgment in Ivashchenko v. Russia concerning the inspection and copying of a journalist’s laptop and storage devices by customs officials. The applicant in the case was a photojournalist with a photo agency, Photographer.ru. In early August 2009, the applicant travelled to Abkhazia to prepare a report (to be illustrated by photographs) on “the life of this unrecognised republic”. On 27 August 2009, the applicant returned to Russia, and on arrival at the Adler customs checkpoint, presented his Russian passport, press card...