Paris 29 September 2017 – Yesterday, the IMCO (‘consumers protection’) Committee of the European Parliament has adopted its Opinion on the ePrivacy Regulation. The majority of its Members, led by the pro-business rapporteur Eva Maydell, are calling for a general bypassing of users’ consent. Act now so that Members of the LIBE (‘civil liberties’) Committee do not answer this dangerous call in their decisive Report voted on 11 October.
‘Freedom of choice should always be guaranteed but it should be not be [sic] made compulsory’. This is with such cryptic and absurd phrases that the rapporteur Eva Maydell justified some of the unacceptable amendments of her Draft Opinion last June. The drift she started back then has now been adopted as a final Opinion by the right-wing and liberals Members of the IMCO Committee:
- Dita Charanzová (ALDE)
- Kaja Kallas (ALDE)
- Matthijs van Miltenburg (ALDE)
- Edward Czesak (ECR)
- Daniel Dalton (ECR)
- Nosheena Mobarik (ECR)
- Anneleen Van Bossuyt (ECR)
- Pascal Arimont (EPP)
- Carlos Coelho (EPP)
- Anna Maria Corazza Bildt (EPP)
- Philippe Juvin (EPP)
- Antonio López-Istúriz White (EPP)
- Eva Maydell (EPP)
- Jiri Pospísil (EPP)
- Ivan Stefanec (EPP)
- Adam Szejnfeld (EPP)
- Mihai Turcanu (EPP)
- Vladimir Urutchev (EPP)
- Lambert van Nistelrooij (EPP)
These Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) want companies to be able to bypass our consent for:
- analysing personal communications which have already been transmitted (for instance, Gmail would no longer need our consent to process emails stored in the inbox);
- analysing metadata of our communications (who we are communicating with, when, how…) for any purpose which is ‘compatible’ with the service they provide (which may actually mean anything and is purposely vague);
- storing ‘pseudonymised’ metadata (for instance, your ISP would be allowed to store the list of IP addresses you communicate with if this list is not directly associated with your name—which does not limit at all how your ISP may monitor each aspect of your online activities);
- geolocating your phones in stores, streets or cites, as long as some kind of poster ‘warn’ you that you may deactivate your Wi-Fi if you wish not to be tracked;
Furthermore, in the few cases where consent would still be required, these MEPs want that our consent to online-tracking may be a condition to access websites or services, allowing our fundamental right to privacy to be traded.
Amendments identical to the absurd and alarming IMCO Opinion have been tabled in the LIBE Committee, which will vote its decisive Report on 11 October. Call LIBE Members now and require such amendments to be rejected.
Learn more, spread the message and act now on: eprivacy.laquadrature.net