EDRi-gram, 2 April 2025

What has the EDRis network been up to over the past two weeks? Find out the latest digital rights news in our bi-weekly newsletter. In this edition: DSA complaint X, New civic coalition for journalists and civil society, imagining EU-topia, & more!

The post EDRi-gram, 2 April 2025 appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

When data never dies: How better GDPR enforcement could minimise hate and harm

Lax enforcement of the GDPR has had far-reaching consequences for many people and collectives in the EU, especially those most vulnerable. Through a story based on real life experiences of people, this blog highlights the gap between the GDPR’s promise of protection and its current reality of weak enforcement, and the opportunity EU lawmakers have with the ongoing GDPR Procedural Regulations to take bold steps to protect our data rights.

The post When data never dies: How better GDPR enforcement could minimise hate and harm appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

Building bridges for digital rights: The Civic Journalism Coalition

EDRi, EDRi member ECNL, Lighthouse Reports have launched the Civic Journalism Coalition – a space to strengthen investigative reporting, protect journalists from surveillance, and advocate for digital rights policies at the EU level.

The post Building bridges for digital rights: The Civic Journalism Coalition appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

Utopian dreams, sobering reality: The end we start from in EU’s approach to technology

We imagine a day in the near-future, when EU lawmakers commit to building a world where people, our planet, and democracy flourishes – and heed to civil society’s long-standing collective demands to achieve this. But in reality, we seem to be getting farther and farther away from this utopian scenario, and are preparing for a sobering next few years in the EU tech policy space.

The post Utopian dreams, sobering reality: The end we start from in EU’s approach to technology appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

The Security Playbook

EDRi affiliate SUPERRR is challenging “Security Theater” as a societal maneuver.

The post The Security Playbook appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

Surveilling Europe’s edges: when research legitimises border violence

In May 2024, EDRi member Access Now’s Caterina Rodelli travelled across Greece to meet with local civil society organisations supporting migrant people and monitoring human rights violations, and to see first-hand how and where surveillance technologies are deployed at Europe’s borders.

The post Surveilling Europe’s edges: when research legitimises border violence appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

Bastian’s Night #420 April, 3rd

Every Thursday of the week, Bastian’s Night is broadcast from 21:30 CET (new time).

Bastian’s Night is a live talk show in German with lots of music, a weekly round-up of news from around the world, and a glimpse into the host’s crazy week in the pirate movement aka Cabinet of Curiosities.

If you want to read more about @BastianBB: –> This way

piratesonair.net/bastians-nigh…

Democracy groups warn of threat ‘Henry VIII’ powers pose to future election integrity

Democracy organisations, privacy groups and academics have written to government ministers to warn that powers in the Data Use and Access (DUA) Bill could threaten the integrity of future elections.

0

The draft Bill includes ‘Henry VIII’ powers that could allow a government to make changes to how political parties use the public’s data without having to pass a new law. Clauses 70(4) and 71(5) give the Secretary of State discretion to determine and vary the conditions under which personal data can be processed.

JOint Letter

HENRY VIII powers in Data Use and Access Bill could undermine election integrity
Read now

Executive powers and electoral integrity

These changes could be timed to the advantage of the governing party over its opponents – for example to allow practices that the ruling political party was ready to deploy. The signatories have pointed out that if such changes were made prior to an election, there may be insufficient time for the ICO or Electoral Commission to issue guidance to Political Parties on any new ‘recognized legitimate interest’ basis for a political party to process voter data for election purposes. This could undermine the integrity of a General Election.

A House of Lords Select Committee has shared similar concerns. The 3rd Report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee stated that they “are not satisfied that the case has been sufficiently made to entrust the powers in these clauses to secondary legislation.”

James Baker, Programme Manager at Open Right Group said:

“Political parties are stuck in an arms race as to how they can use data to reach and influence potential voters in order to win elections.

“It’s therefore vital that there are clear and fair rules for how political parties are allowed to use our data. Any changes to these rules must be properly scrutinized by parliament.

“This not just about how our data is being used, it’s about the future of our democracy. At a time when public trust in politicians is low, the Government must act to prevent the Data Bill enabling future abuses of power.”

Tom Brake, Director of Unlock Democracy said:

“A few months before the General Election, Lucy Powell MP, now the Leader of the House, talked of Labour’s commitment to “doing legislation better”, with “better planning, better drafting and better scrutiny”. The Henry VIII powers contained in the Bill mean the DUA Bill fails to deliver on those commitments. It must be amended so that it does.”

The letter’s signatories are calling on ministers to amend the Bill to ensure powers to create a statutory instrument to create a recognized legitimate interest basis for sharing personal data can’t be applied to political parties.

Notes to Editor

Henry VIII power are delegated legislative powers that allow the government to override or amend legislation through statutory instruments (SIs). These are passed without meaningful parliamentary scrutiny and no SI has been rejected by the House of Commons since 1979”.

The DUA Bill contains 87 examples of such powers. Read ORG’s briefing on this here.

Last year, an Open Right Group report highlighted the challenges in enforcing how political parties use our data. Moral Hazard: Voter Data Privacy and Politics in Election Canvassing Apps raised concerns about the privacy and security of canvassing apps used by political parties, and raised the question of whether voters’ data is being used unlawfully.

Briefing: Henry VIII powers threaten democracy and UK adequacy

Read ORG’s briefing on executive powers in the Data Use and Access Bill.
Find out more

Data and Democracy

Data and Democracy

Find Out More

Digital Privacy

Hands Off Our Data

Find Out More

Become a member
Join the movement

openrightsgroup.org/press-rele…

How shareholders can stop media outlets from 'bribing' Trump

We’re not your lawyers and this article isn’t legal advice. Talk to your attorney before taking any legal action.

Paramount executives are currently grappling with the decision of whether to settle President Donald Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against the media conglomerate’s CBS News unit for allegedly editing an interview in favor of Kamala Harris. Companies including ABC’s parent, Disney, and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta have already settled Trump’s legally dubious claims.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has opened an investigation into CBS’ alleged “distortion” in conjunction with Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount, and has even threatened media outlets’ license renewals pending compliance with the administration’s policies. Paramount executives reportedly fear that Trump’s FCC will block its proposed merger with movie studio Skydance if it doesn’t settle Trump’s lawsuit.

Yet, The Wall Street Journal has reported that at least some Paramount executives are hesitant to write a check. Not because they care about the First Amendment or the precedent that settling would set for journalists. It’s because they’re scared of getting sued. As they should be — here’s why.

A settlement of a frivolous lawsuit by Trump to secure approval of a merger could amount to bribery. The case would be especially strong if Trump’s team has made clear to CBS, as it reportedly did to Meta before the social media platform settled its own litigation with Trump, that it needs to pay to play. Penalties can be imposed under both U.S. criminal law and the Sherman Antitrust Act.

But the Trump administration is unlikely to prosecute bribes it solicits. So the burning question (and the one that’s likely giving those executives cold feet) is: Can shareholders of Paramount, or other news publishers the administration extorts, do anything about it? After all, this is up to $20 billion of company funds we’re talking about.

The short answer is yes.

Shareholders can file what are known as derivative lawsuits when the company and therefore the values of their shares are harmed, even if the shareholders are not directly harmed. Any shareholder has the option to step into the shoes of Paramount and sue the board or officers on behalf of the company. The court docket would read Paramount v. Paramount.

That means shareholders who care about press freedom and want the press to thrive don’t need to worry about the economic implications of “suing the press” the way they might in other kinds of litigation. If the shareholder wins, the news outlet wins and recovers the monetary damages, not the shareholders.

Yes, the company might need to incur legal fees (although it can later sue to recover those from the executives), but in many cases that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the value recovered by holding executives accountable for waste and illegality.

A settlement of a frivolous lawsuit by Trump to secure approval of a merger could amount to bribery.

There are a few important legal requirements to be able to file a derivative suit. For example, one must be a shareholder at the time of the settlement and throughout the entire lawsuit. Selling all of one’s shares at any point in the process would invalidate the suit.

Technically, shareholders must also file a presuit demand letter on the company. This is a letter demanding that the board of directors bring the suit themselves instead of the shareholders. We say “technically” because filing this letter can be a strategic mistake that can cost the lawsuit, and there are exceptions to the requirement that can help avoid the land mines. It’s important to consult your lawyer about this requirement.

Importantly, if a court agrees that the settlement payment constitutes an illegal bribe, company officials cannot claim that paying was in the company’s best interests. An illegal act like bribery negates such defenses. The “business judgment rule,” which generally requires courts to refrain from second-guessing corporate officers’ good faith decisions, does not apply to bribery.

Derivative suits — and board elections — are the only real tools available to shareholders to keep their company executives in check. On their face, derivative suits seem complex and difficult to maintain, but in practice they’re an effective tool for regulating the behaviors of company officials.

For example, Trump ally and former casino boss Steve Wynn — another fan of frivolous defamation lawsuits against the press — knows a thing or two about shareholder’s derivative suits. Wynn Resorts’ officers and directors, including Wynn, agreed to pay $41 million in 2019 following a derivative shareholder suit for their failure to stop Wynn’s alleged sexual misconduct. It meant that the officers and directors, and not the shareholders, incurred the losses the company faced due to their wrongdoing.

At the end of the day, Paramount and its shareholders will be severely affected by a bribe costing even a fraction of the $20 billion Trump’s lawsuit demands, especially if paying off the government undermines CBS’ ability to report on it effectively or otherwise harms its reputation and reduces its viewership.

If those costs are borne by the company itself and not its directors, they could even lead to budget and job cuts, harming CBS journalists and journalism. It would also establish a dangerous precedent: that this administration can abuse its power to pressure media companies into doing its bidding.

Filing a derivative claim immediately after any settlement takes place could not only help shareholders minimize damages to media companies but also could help put a stop to these arguably illegal and definitely unethical settlement agreements. Corporate executives know that — they’re hoping you don’t.

freedom.press/issues/how-share…

Joint Letter: Henry VIII powers in Data Use and Access Bill could undermine election integrity

openrightsgroup.org/app/upload…
Download

To Sir Chris Bryant MP, Minister of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

To Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and Deputy Prime Minister

As organisations and individuals concerned with health functioning of democracy, we welcomed the commitment in the Kings Speech to “strengthen the integrity of elections”. We are therefore writing to alert you to the potential for abuse of new powers in the Data Use and Access Bill to remove constraints on the way that political parties use data, and urge you to ensure amendments to prevent such abuse.

Clauses 70(4) and 71(5)¹ give the Secretary of State discretion to determine and vary the conditions under which personal data can be processed. We note the 3rd Report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee stated that they “are not satisfied that the case has been sufficiently made to entrust the powers in these clauses to secondary legislation.”²

The new Henry VIII powers would allow any future government to change the rules with minimal parliamentary oversight. Such changes could be timed to advantage the governing party of the day, for example by allowing practices it was ready to deploy, while other parties were not.

They could also be passed in such a manner that there was little or no time for the ICO or Electoral Commission to issue guidance to Political Parties on any new ‘legitimate interest’ basis for a political party to process voter data for election purposes. This would undermine the integrity of elections.

The use of data by parties is very difficult to enforce. The ICO has struggled to be critical or enforce against practices except in extreme circumstances, precisely because it needs a close relationship with political parties³. Moreover, political parties have limited resources, but live in a high stakes environment; they are under pressure do whatever they can do win elections. This can lead, as Open Rights Group recently found, to poor security and to unethical profiling and data mining of voters, unethical attempts to obtain commercial data sets, as well as questionable use of online advertising techniques.⁴

Any future government will be under internal party pressure to loosen the rules on use of personal data, in order to further any advantage they may have. The powers in the bill give those future governments the means to do so, and to time these changes in such a way that other parties cannot respond. The Bill increases the likelihood of looser rules, undermining democratic trust, by making trivially easy for a government to rewrite them to their short term advantage.

We hope we can work with you to amend the law to ensure how parties process political data can’t be changed with a statutory instrument.

Signed by

Unlock Democracy
Fair Vote UK
Big Brother Watch
Keep Our NHS Public
Open Rights Group
Privacy International
Good Law Project

Prof Vian Bakir, 
Professor of Journalism & Political Communication, Bangor University
Prof Angela Daly, Professor of Law and Technology, University of Dundee
Prof Charlotte Heath-Kelly, Professor of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

¹ https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0179/240179.pdf

²publications.parliament.uk/pa/…publications.parliament.uk/pa/… paragraph 13

³ https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/2259371/investigation-into-data-analytics-for-political-purposes-update.pdf

⁴ Moral Hazard: Voter Data Privacy and Politics in Election Canvassing Apps, (January 2025) Open Rights Group openrightsgroup.org/publicatio…

Briefing: Henry VIII powers threaten democracy and UK adequacy

Read ORG’s briefing on executive powers in the Data Use and Access Bill.
Find out more

Data and Democracy

Data and Democracy

Find Out More

Become a member
Join the movement

openrightsgroup.org/publicatio…