Position Paper Archives - Page 6 of 7

EuroISPA strongly supports end-to-end encryption and opposes calls for backdoors

07/10/2019/in 2019, Position Paper

Brussels, 7 October 2019: The UK, Australia, and the United States asked Facebook and other companies to delay their plans to implement end-to-end encryption across their messaging services and to provide law enforcement with lawful access to their users’ encrypted content. In this context, EuroISPA reiterates its support for strong encryption, a fundamental element to ensure cybersecurity and users’ privacy.

On 4 October 2019, high ranking officials from the UK, Australia and the USA addressed a letter to Facebook requesting it does “not proceed with its plan to implement end-to-end encryption across its messaging services without providing […] means for lawful access to the content of communications to protect our citizens.”

Maximilian Schubert, President of EuroISPA and Chair of the Cybersecurity Committee, reacted: “EuroISPA’s members continuously work with law enforcement towards making the online sphere a safer space for businesses as well as individuals. At the same time, EuroISPA firmly supports strong encryption, as it plays a fundamental role in ensuring cybersecurity and users’ privacy”.

End-to-end encryption in messaging services, as well as cryptographic protocols such as TLS (Transport Layer Security) and HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), are essential for creating trust in the Internet. The now suggested techniques aim to allow law enforcement to access private communications. Experience has however shown that such measures will always be exploited by ill-intentioned hackers, undermining cybersecurity and privacy for all users and businesses online. This would weaken that very trust and might result in a slower take-up of online services throughout the EU.

Therefore, given the societal advantages of encryption and the negative effects of mandatory backdoors, EuroISPA opposes the request of the United Kingdom, Australia, as well as the United States. EuroISPA’s members stand ready to collaborate with law enforcement authorities to assist them in criminal investigations.

EuroISPA report on Priority Flagging Partnerships in Practice

17/04/2019/in 2019, Position Paper

We are happy to share EuroISPA’s report on Priority Flagging Partnerships in Practice.

The document provides a first structured insight into best practices from companies with priority flagging partnerships in place in order to improve their management of illegal content online, where the information was gathered through a written survey shared amongst EuroISPA Forum Members and external companies.

A broad range of ISPs, including online marketplaces, social networks, search engines and providers of content delivery networks shared their input and insights. Thanks to this survey, we gathered information on the variety of stakeholders involved, on the existing selection processes, on the rights and duties of priority flaggers, on the different types of content reported, etc.

The report can be found here

10 organisations share concerns on unworkable 1-hour timeframes to remove terrorist content online

05/04/2019/in 2019, Position Paper

Brussels, 5 April 2019: EuroISPA and nine other organisations from the digital sector and civil society call on the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee to adopt the proposal on tackling the dissemination of terrorist content online without an unworkable one-hour timeframe to remove content.

The proposed timeframe does not take into account the size and economic capacity of hosting service providers. European small and medium-sized enterprises not operating a 24/7 service, for instance, would not be able to comply with removal orders being sent outside of working hours.

Instead, we suggest to follow a more pragmatic approach which would mandate hosting service providers to execute removal orders “as soon as possible”. Such an amendment would be compliant with European citizens’ fundamental rights and protect the competitiveness of digital businesses, while ensuring a good framework of cooperation between hosting service providers and Member States to tackle the dissemination of terrorist content online.

You can read the full letter here

EuroISPA regrets plenary vote on EU Copyright Directive

26/03/2019/in 2019, Position Paper

Brussels, 26 March 2019 – EuroISPA regrets that the majority of the European Parliament endorsed the Copyright Directive reform, with its Articles 11 and 13 featuring in the final agreement.

Innocenzo Genna, Chair of the Innovation and Growth Committee, commented: “A majority of policy-makers in the European Parliament ignored the concerns of more than 5 million users, civil society, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, creative SMEs and startups, innovative media and publishers, and the Internet industry at large”.

EuroISPA members are concerned that upload filters necessary to comply with Article 13 will impact the competitiveness of European SMEs, while pushing overly cautious platforms to remove potentially legal content in order to avoid liability, with detriment for users’ rights. Furthermore, Article 11 on press publishers’ rights could limit European users’ ability to share snippets and hyperlinks online, due to unclear and partial carve-outs included in the text.

As the Copyright Directive will be transposed at the national level, EuroISPA’s national members will make concerted efforts to minimize the damage for the Internet ecosystem across Member States and address the lack of clarity in same areas of the proposal.

Industry and civil society share concerns on Regulation on terrorist content online with MEPs

18/03/2019/in 2019, Position Paper

Brussels – 18 March 2019: EuroISPA and eight organisations representing civil society and industry sent a letter to the European Parliament highlighting concerns on the proposal for a Regulation on Preventing the Dissemination of Terrorist Content Online.

The co-signatories suggest several measures to improve the proposal, such as limiting the definition of “hosting service providers”, amending the extremely short one-hour deadline to comply with removal orders, and clearly aligning the proposal with the e-Commerce Directive.

You can read it here.

The letter has been signed by:

Access Now – https://www.accessnow.org/
Allied for Startups – https://alliedforstartups.org/
Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) –
https://www.cccianet.org
Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) – https://cdt.org/
CISPE.cloud, representing Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe – https://cispe.cloud/
EDiMA – http://edima-eu.org
EDRi – edri.org/
EuroISPA, the pan-European association of Internet Services Providers Associations –https://www.euroispa.org
Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU – https://wikimediafoundation.org/

EuroISPA regrets Copyright trilogue outcome, urges MEPs to reject the reform

14/02/2019/in 2019, Position Paper

Brussels, 14 February 2019 – EuroISPA regrets the outcome of yesterday’s trilogue, where the representatives of the European Parliament and the Council approved the Copyright Directive reform.

With this decision, the negotiators clearly showed that the concerns of civil society, users, academia, industry, founders of the Internet, and the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression continuously fell on deaf ears. Recently, even the music, audio-visual, broadcasting and sports sectors – originally strong proponents of this provision – joined the protest against Article 13.

Innocenzo Genna, Chair of the Innovation and Growth Committee, stated: “These rules will impose upload filters on platforms, impacting the competitiveness of European innovative SMEs, and leading to the over-blocking of legal content. Article 11, if adopted, would change the Internet as we know it: an ancillary copyright would affect small platforms and innovative online publishers, while limiting the ability of European users to use hyperlinks and share snippets online. Ultimately, this would have a significant negative impact on freedom of expression in Europe”.

Furthermore, the Copyright Directive reform would lead to further fragmentation of the Digital Single Market, instead of harmonisation, as Member States with different legal cultures will implement it differently and create legal uncertainty for the industry.

As the EU elections approach, the Members of the European Parliament should use this opportunity to vote this reform down – a vote closely watched by the EU electorate. As more than 4 million concerned citizens signed a petition to voice their concerns, EuroISPA calls on MEPs to reject the current text, in order to explore new constructive solutions during the next European legislature.

67 industry associations reiterate concerns on ePrivacy in letter to negotiators

28/11/2018/in 2018, Position Paper

Brussels – 28 November 2018: Ahead of the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council meeting of 4 December, 67 industry associations, including EuroISPA, reiterated their concerns about the proposal for an ePrivacy Regulation. Despite ongoing negotiations in the Council, the text remains far from addressing the many substantive issues that have been raised since the proposal was first put forward. The signatories therefore urge Member States to signal clearly that negotiations with the European Parliament should not be rushed on the basis of a flawed text, which would have profound repercussions for the European economy.

You can read the letter here

Copyright : EuroISPA co-signs industry letter addressed to EU negotiators

20/11/2018/in 2018, Position Paper

Brussels, 20 November 2018: EuroISPA and several European and national trade associations sent a letter on the Copyright Directive reform to the EU Institutions.

The letter supports the exclusion of hyperlinks and snippets from the scope of the proposal, as well as limiting the scope to active platforms which give access to phonograms, broadcasts, films or musical works.

EuroISPA urges the European Commission, the Council, and the European Parliament to strive towards a balanced approach in the remaining trilogue negotiations.

EuroISPA regrets Plenary vote on Copyright

12/09/2018/in 2018, Position Paper

Strasbourg, 12 September 2018 – EuroISPA regrets the outcome of today’s vote of the European Parliament in favour of the Copyright Directive reform. A majority of MEPs have decided to impose upload filters on platforms, and to create an ancillary copyright which might ultimately restrict Europeans’ ability to freely share information online.

They have ignored pleas and warnings coming from hundreds of academics, founders of the Internet, one million of concerned citizens, trade associations, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and the protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

The proposal will be now discussed by the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council in the so-called trilogue negotiations. EuroISPA calls on the negotiators to strive towards a balanced approach in the upcoming months.

Terrorist Content Online: EuroISPA concerned as Commission privatises law enforcement

12/09/2018/in 2018, Position Paper, Press

Brussels, 12 September 2018- Less than one week after the transposition of the Directive on Combatting Terrorism, the European Commission has published its proposal on “preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online”. EuroISPA strongly criticises the steps towards the further privatisation of law enforcement, as the proposal would oblige hosting service providers to proactively decide on the legality of allegedly terrorist content, with profound implications for fundamental rights and freedoms. Malcolm Hutty, Intermediary Liability Chair, stated: “Handing off responsibility for detecting terrorist content to internet intermediaries is passing off one of the State’s most fundamental responsibilities. Internet companies can neither identify terrorist content reliably, nor act as guarantors for freedom speech. Only competent public authorities have the ability to protect both our safety and our freedoms. The proper role for Internet companies is simply to act swiftly to remove material that an independent authority has determined to be illegal by due process of law”.

With this proposal the Commission mandates a large part of the Internet value chain to proactively decide on the legality and nature of content online, following a risk assessment of their service. Such requirements, combined with vaguely defined duty of care obligations are deeply worrying, raising issues of transparency, legal clarity, accountability and certainty. As a result, fundamental freedoms of expression as well as of sharing and receiving information are endangered.

The proposal’s provision for a one-hour timeframe poses risks to due process and legal clarity. This timeframe, combined with sanctions, is simply not feasible for SMEs, who do not have the resources to provide a 24/7 service. Therefore, an SME exemption should be included, in order not to disadvantage SMEs vis-à-vis larger platforms.

The included data retention obligation, running contrary to existing case-law, is equally concerning. The vast range of data covered by the scope of the Regulation will ultimately endanger European users’ privacy. Moreover, the possibility for competent authorities to renew the data retention obligations an unlimited number of times might prove extremely burdensome for SMEs.

While technological progress and service providers’ efforts have led to a higher rate of removal of terrorist content in recent months, filtering only constitutes a quick fix. It does not solve the root issues of dealing with the perpetrators or providing justice to victims.

Dedicated Single Points of Contact (SPOCs) and referral units, such as Europol’s Internet Referral Unit, work closely in collaboration with Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These existing procedures have dramatically accelerated the removal of terrorist content online. However, EuroISPA expresses its concerns over the tendency in privatising law enforcement activities, placing this responsibility in the hands of ISPs. EuroISPA calls for careful consideration of this proposal, to strive towards greater legal clarity, transparency and accountability in line with legal safeguards. Due consideration should be given to already existing voluntary processes, and the close cooperation between industry and law enforcement. This voluntary approach has proven thus far to be efficient and effective in tackling terrorist content online.

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