Month: March 2022

As civil society, we welcomed Minister Cedric O’s commitment on Friday to prohibit targeted advertising to minors as well as the use of sensitive data for ad targeting in the DSA. Now the French Council Presidency must follow through and protect citizens, 35 NGOs write in an open letter.

The open letter was sent to France’s President Emmanuel Macron and the French Presidency of the EU Council by 35 NGOs

Dear President Macron,

We are writing to you on behalf of the People vs Big Tech Coalition to express our deep concern regarding France’s failure to follow through on its promise to meaningfully protect EU citizens from the invasive use of their sensitive personal data for targeted advertising in the Digital Services Act.

This is a system that has been weaponised by foreign and nefarious actors to distort public debate and democracy – not least by Russia. It is also a system that routinely tramples on the rights of European citizens.

According to our newly published YouGov poll, an overwhelming majority of French citizens (70%) support a ban on the use of people’s sensitive personal data to target online advertisements. They are counting on you to secure this baseline protection in the DSA.

While we commend you for France’s tenacity in seeing through sweeping reform of the Big Tech platforms in the form of the Digital Markets Act, agreed last week, one of our movement’s core demands is that the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act take adequate steps to rein in the most invasive and harmful practices in online advertising.

This is why we were so encouraged to hear Minister O’s commitment on Friday, announcing that the DSA would include the proposal to prohibit targeted advertising to minors as well as the use of sensitive information for ad targeting.

Minister O rounded off his commitment with a reference to “how much trust there was between (the negotiators) to allow us to move forward and to take the most logical approach” on this all-important issue.

To our dismay, that trust now appears to have been broken. Mere days later, the French Council Presidency appears to have diluted the provision on sensitive data in ad targeting by moving it to a recital and severely weakening it so that it no longer meaningfully protects citizens from this exploitative practice.

This means European citizens will continue to be exposed to intrusive advertising on the basis of inferences about them which they may never choose to explicitly share or meaningfully consent to – including sensitive categories such as religious or political views, health conditions, and sexual preferences.

Beyond the well-documented harms to people’s rights, the use of sensitive data for advertising raises serious democracy and national security concerns. By segmenting the paid-for messages that are seen by specific groups of the electorate, dialogue between communities is prevented and disinformation can more easily thrive.

This type of advertising can and has already been weaponised by nefarious actors to distort public debate and influence democratic processes in Europe.

Russian interference in the US 2016 election via targeted ads was a clear example and, at a time when the world order is increasingly precarious and actors such as Russia seek to undermine the EU, the risks are now even higher.

The Digital Services Act is a vital opportunity to move towards a safer online advertising system which European consumers and businesses are able to trust and which safeguards citizen’s fundamental rights.

European citizens are counting on France to follow through on its promise to ensure that a final deal on the DSA prohibits the use of sensitive data, including the drawing of inferences about a person’s sensitive characteristics, for the purpose of displaying advertisements.

This is a critical baseline protection, already limited in scope to online platforms only, proportionate to the harms and necessary to achieve the aims.

If France wants a swift deal on the Digital Services Act, it cannot afford to betray European citizens at the eleventh hour. We hope that instead you will lead the way in ensuring a Digital Services Act that offers vital and overdue protections for European citizens.

Yours sincerely,

Access Now

All Out

Alliance4Europe

Avaaz

Bits of Freedom

Bulgarian Helsinki Committee

Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties)

Citizen D / Državljan D

Cultural Broadcasting Archive (CBA)

Defend Democracy

D3 – Defesa dos Direitos Digitais

Democracy and Human Rights Education in Europe – DARE network

Digitas Institute

European Digital Rights Initiative (Edri)

Fair Vote

Federation of German Consumer Organisations (vzbv)

Fix the Status Quo

Global Action Plan UK

Global Forum for Media Development

Global Witness

HateAid

Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Irish Council for Civil Liberties 

#JeSuisLa

LobbyControl

Panoptykon Foundation

Peter Tatchell Foundation

Ranking Digital Rights

Sum of Us

The Coalition For Women In Journalism

The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation

The Signals Network

Vrijschrift.org

Waag

Wikimedia Deutschland

Wikimedia France

Last night, 24 March, the European Union made a great step forward to better protecting our rights online as it approved the political trilogue compromise for the Digital Markets Act (DMA). This decision promises to challenge the strongly centralised environment of Big Tech platforms exerting too much power over our rights and over the flow of information in society. Tech companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple will have to start following strict rules that ensure free and fair competition in the digital markets.

Following intense discussions and months of advocacy and campaigning from civil society, negotiators from the European Parliament, the French Presidency of the Council of the EU and the European Commission agreed on the final version of the DMA. In effect, this legislation will contribute to reining in Big Tech’s grip on people’s experience online as well as on some of the major digital markets.

From a human rights perspective, this is a major win to ensure the protection of people’s rights and enable open, fair, competitive digital spaces.

“The DMA will put an end to some of the most harmful practices of Big Tech and narrow the power imbalance between people and online platforms. If correctly implemented, the new agreement will empower individuals to choose more freely the type of online experience and society we want to build in the digital era.”

– Diego Naranjo, Head of Policy, EDRi

Civil society has successfully pushed for a DMA that builds on existing data protection rules under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As a result, the DMA will protect people’s data from being used across several gatekeeper services like Gmail, YouTube, Facebook and WhatsApp, without a person’s explicit consent.

According to French State Secretary and DMA chief negotiator for the Council, Cédric O, there was an agreement between negotiating bodies to include a ban on the use of sensitive personal data for surveillance advertising in the Digital Services Act (DSA). While this DMA deal will limit some of the worst data use practices of the surveillance ads industry, EDRi will continue to advocate for a complete phase-out of surveillance-based online advertising in Europe.

EDRi is pleased about the inclusion of interoperability requirements for instant messaging services of gatekeepers. Under the new rules, gatekeepers that offer messaging services will be required to allow their users to connect and communicate with people on similar services while preserving the privacy protection afforded by end-to-end encryption. This interoperability requirement will empower people to move away from the dominant gatekeeper’s service without losing their secure connections with friends and family who decide to stay there. It will also enable the creation of a whole new ecosystem of interoperable chat apps that work in the interest of their users rather than for the benefit of advertisers and data brokers.

It is disappointing, however, to see that the final DMA compromise allows gatekeepers an unnecessarily long transition period to introduce the interoperability of voice calls and group chats. Both features are considered by users to be irreplaceable standards in chat apps and their absence is likely to seriously limit the benefit of the whole obligation.

The DMA will also empower the European Commission to add additional obligations for gatekeepers in the future, notably an interoperability obligation on social networks like Facebook. We hope the European Commission will consider using this power soon.

Now, it is vital that the Council and the European Parliament approve the negotiated political compromise and ensure that people’s rights are put before Big Tech’s corporate interests and profit.

“The DMA is a major step towards limiting the tremendous market power that today’s gatekeeper tech firms have. We must now make sure that the new obligations not to re-use personal data and the prohibition of using sensitive data for surveillance advertising are respected and properly enforced by the European Commission. Only then will the change be felt by people who depend on digital services every day.”

– Jan Penfrat, Senior Policy Advisor, EDRi

Ahead of the upcoming Digital Services Act (DSA) trilogue meeting on 15 March, EDRi, Liberties and Amnesty International and 69 other civil society organisations have sent a joint open letter to 20 ministers and state secretaries in 9 EU Member States. On Tuesday 1.03.2022, several organisations in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Croatia delivered the letter to relevant decision-makers responsible for their country’s position in the EU negotiations.

UPDATE: After publication, the letter was further delivered to responsible ministries in Ireland and Poland, totaling the number of addressed Member States to 11.

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Ahead of the upcoming Digital Services Act (DSA) trilogue meeting on 15 March, EDRi, Liberties and Amnesty International and 69 other civil society organisations have sent a joint open letter to 20 ministers and state secretaries in 9 EU Member States. 

On Tuesday 1.03.2022, several organisations in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Croatia delivered the letter to relevant decisionmakers responsible for their country’s position in the EU negotiations.  

Read the original open letter (17/03/2022) 

The Digital Services Act is an enormous opportunity to address the toxic consequences of online platforms’ business models based on exploitative tracking and targeting of people. Such consequences include amplification of harmful content, distorted public debate and discrimination of people.

The letter calls for a phase-out of unwanted online tracking ads and dark patterns. Additionally, the call emphasises the need for the DSA to safeguard the privacy protections we all have under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

“The DSA must put an end to manipulative tracking ads practices that have infested every corner of the internet. Pervasive online tracking is fueling harm – from discriminatory job ads to Russian lies about their war in Ukraine. We urge Ministers in the EU to support the European Parliament’s proposals against tracking ads and dark patterns.”

— Jan Penfrat, Senior Policy Advisor at EDRi

Dark patterns are manipulative interfaces designed to trick users into unintentionally consenting to share their personal data. 

Tracking-based online advertising relies on mass harvesting of personal data and algorithmic inferences which threaten our human rights, above all the right to privacy. However, this has a series of knock-on effects on other rights including freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of thought, and the right to equality and non-discrimination. 

“The targeted advertising model is based on personal data harvesting. It manipulates public debate, amplifies harmful content, and sows division in society. We can see long-term consequences of keeping people in an information bubble, decreasing the level of public discussion, and using targeting to spread disinformation, which impacts free and fair elections.”

— Eva Simon, Senior advocacy officer at Civil Liberties Union For Europe

The majority of people actually do not want personalised ads and opt against tracking when given a real choice. Even, small and medium-sized businesses would like to see large online platforms face stricter regulation on how they use personal data for ad targeting.

 “By supporting key amendments to the Digital Services Act, EU member states will take important steps towards changing the current system of invasive data harvesting and microtargeting.”

— Alia Al Ghussain, Campaigns and Communications Officer at Amnesty Tech

The DSA has the potential to change the broken system based on data harvesting and protect the fundamental rights of internet users. In order to do so, the DSA must phase out the pervasive online tracking business model and prohibit dark patterns that trick users into sharing personal data they would not otherwise want to.

Please note that this letter was originally published on 17 March 2022 with 35 signatory organisations, and remains open for additional signatures. To add your organisation, please fill in the sign-up form.

Read the original letter in these languages: