Privacy groups outraged by EU vote

Civil rights groups have hit back at moves to relax the proposed EU Data Protection Regulation by publishing a Brussels Privacy Declaration calling for better protection for EU citizens.
The declaration, which interested users can sign, lays out a new set of demands, and expresses outrage that the basic right of individuals to decide what happens to their information is being “widely ignored”.
The move will serve as a stark reminder that the DM industry’s fight against the Directive still has a long way to go, despite the European Parliament’s Committee on the Internal Market & Consumer Protection (IMCO) voting to kick out some of the proposed measures earlier this week.
Nearly a dozen civil rights and consumer protection organisations have already signed up to the declaration, which has been created by Dutch organisation Bits of Freedom and the umbrella groups Privacy International and European Digital Rights.
They claim that every EU consumer is already stored in hundreds of databases, largely without their knowledge or consent. It says any citizen going online today can expect their every click to be monitored by more than 50 specialised companies. The information collected is constantly being “categorised and judged by algorithms” and the user then treated according to the “perceived value they may or may not bring to business”, it adds.
The groups are urging MEPs and governments to strengthen and better enforce data protection legislation, and call for the new Directive to set out that personal data can only be processed with “explicit, strong and informed consent”. Any such move would cost the digital and direct marketing industries billions to implement.
The signatories also call for a ban on the practice of linking the use of a service to the granting of permission to use personal data and want the sharing of data to be made more transparent.
The civil rights groups believe that “true data portability” is essential for promoting competition and making it easier to switch to other platforms. They want the “secret” online and offline profiling of users and customers to be banned and state that every EU citizen should have the right to effectively control his or her personal information.

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