EDRi, along with a broad coalition of civil society organisations, demands urgent action from the European Commission and Member States to ensure that the rights enshrined in the AI Act do not remain hollow promises, but that the Commission and Member States act decisively and immediately to ensure the timely national implementation of the AI Act now.

The post Open Letter: The European Commission and Member States must keep AI Act national implementation on track appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

The Czech Pirates Launch a 100-Day Plan

The Czech Pirate Party has entered the hot phase of their national election campaign with a bold and concrete plan for the first 100 days in government. Their program is built on affordable housing, fair taxation, transparency, and modernization of the state – with the clear message that “We have more in common than you think.”

The Czech Pirates’ 10 Key Proposals

1. More Homes for Citizens – faster construction, fewer regulations, CZK 20 billion annually for housing, end of speculation on the housing market.
2. Tax Relief for Families – higher tax allowances, stronger child support, parental allowance of CZK 420,000.
3. Cheaper Food and Essentials – lower VAT on basic goods, action against cartels, transparent online price monitoring.
4. Fair Subsidies – more funds for small and medium-sized enterprises, no subsidies or contracts for cabinet members.
5. Better Healthcare and Education – audit to cut waste, more doctors and dentists, stronger teachers and school leadership.
6. Anti-Corruption Clean-Up – anti-mafia law, property declarations, confiscation of criminal proceeds, tougher penalties.
7. A Functional Parliament – rules reform to end endless filibusters and make MPs work for citizens.
8. Marriage Equality – equal rights for same-sex couples.
9. Less Bureaucracy, More Digitalization – cut red tape, remove duplicate inspections, expand digital public services.
10. Regulated Cannabis Market – up to CZK 3 billion in state revenue, end of criminalization of users, tougher sanctions for dealers targeting minors.

The European Pirates strongly welcome the Czech Pirates’ ambitious and people-focused program. Their proposals show how Pirate policies deliver practical solutions: fighting corruption, protecting families, building a fairer economy, and ensuring a modern digital state.

We believe the Czech Pirates are setting an inspiring example for Pirate movements across Europe. Their vision proves that with courage, transparency, and citizen engagement, politics can serve the people – not the oligarchs.

“As European Pirates, we stand together with our Czech colleagues as they bring Pirate values to the heart of government. Change is possible, and it starts with us.”
The post Czech Pirate Party in the run-up to the elections! first appeared on European Pirate Party.

The European Commission is set to reform Frontex’s mandate again in 2026. Frontex is the European Border and Coast Guard agency. Responding to the consultation call, the ProtectNotSurveil coalition highlights how reckless the expansion of Frontex’s surveillance capacities would be and how the Commission’s foreseen plans go in the opposite direction of what migrants and affected communities are calling for.

The post ProtectNotSurveil coalition raises alarm about EU’s Frontex expansion plans appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

The European Commission launched a call for evidence to gather views on the reform of Europol’s mandate. Europol is the EU law enforcement cooperation agency. EDRi along with Resist Europol coalition members submitted a response to the consultation, sharing their concerns about this renewed expansion of powers, despite Europol’s numerous issues around opacity and lack of accountability.

The post Consultation response to the European Commission’s call for evidence on a new Europol regulation appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

We are proud to sponsor The Abolition and Alternatives Conference (AAC) on October 3–5. The conference is organized and hosted by The Black Response at their offices at 245 Main Street, Cambridge, MA, 02142. We encourage all Pirates to attend and support this conference, especially, but not exclusively, the ShotSpotter and Police Surveillance track. If you can not attend, or even if you can, please consider giving a donation to The Black Response or print out their poster and put it up in your neighborhood. See you in less than two weeks!

Details on the conference are reproduced below. Edits are only for clarity:

This free, in-person event will bring together community members, organizers, and advocates for a weekend of in-depth learning and discussion focused on alternative public safety and community care, housing justice, and the impacts of surveillance technologies like ShotSpotter. It will include keynote addresses from Fatema Ahmad (Muslim Justice League), Stephanie Guirand (The Black Response), and Spencer Piston (Boston University).

Food will be provided, childcare will be available, and we encourage attendees to share any additional access needs via the conference interest form. TBR will be reaching out to invite participation as speakers and facilitators. For questions, please contact Stephanie at general@theblackresponsecambridge.com.

Throughout the conference, participants will have the opportunity to choose from panels in four tracks:

Housing Justice

This track features panels led by the Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition (CHJC). CHJC is a coalition of activist groups and concerned Cambridge residents who believe housing is a basic human right. The panels and workshops on this track will focus on housing justice and its intersections with the prison industrial complex.

ShotSpotter and Police Surveillance

This track will be led by the #StopShotSpotter Coalition Camberville. In this track, coalition members will provide an introduction to ShotSpotter, the audio-surveillance technology. We will examine its impact in Cambridge, the national landscape, and broader conversations about surveillance tech.

Alternatives and Community Care

This track will be led by members of the Massachusetts Community Care Network (MCCN). This track will include panels of responders, program directors, and organizers working to make alternatives to policing real. It includes a panel on the movement with Daanika Gordon, Spencer Piston, and Minali Aggarwal.

Community Concerns (Anti-Racism, Immigration Justice, Justice for Palestine, and Black Lives Matter)

This track will discuss concerns that come directly from the communities we serve and work with. These concerns also intersect with the movement for abolition and alternatives. They include Justice for Palestine, Immigration Justice, and Anti-Racism. In this tract we intend to learn from organizers leading these movements in Massachusetts.

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Things have certainly felt easier in these United States. It isn’t often where you feel so much happening all at once. It’s more than disorienting when it feels like everything is burning.

Billy Joel once famously pointed out, “We didn’t start the fire. It was always burning since the world’s been turning… no, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.”

That song served its purpose; show the world that times have always been crazy. It appears to have been a successful venture in retrospect, with the song having earned him a Grammy nomination and the number one space on the Billboard Hot 100.

The people heard it and loved it, with the idea of the ever-burning world putting itself in the subconscious of many. People now widely take for granted “Well, the world has always been crazy.”

We won’t be discussing Fall Out Boy’s hackjob here.

But there are times where things are especially crazy, and I think we are living in those times today.

Famously, the aforementioned song starts in 1949. Which would be post-World Wars. We often take for granted that the world burning is meant to show it always has been, but it’s those moments when the world is eating itself alive do we need to focus out proper attentions on.

There are plenty of points in history you can point to and see how bad things can get. There are watershed moments that shape the trajectory entire world. It is the explosion that we often remember in history; the World Wars, the US Civil War, even the Revolutionary War. We are taught about the build up to the explosion.

Strangely, we often glorify it.

There is no doubt in my mind that we are heading in a direction we may not be able to come back from if we don’t address it now. We might not have reached that point of no return yet, but I fear just how close we might be.

Let’s take a moment to understand the situation we find ourselves in.

Nearly two weeks ago, as of the posting of this article, a 16 year old who was radicalized online and expressed neo-Nazi views shot and critically injured two students at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, CO before committing suicide.

You might not have heard about that because, that same day, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed.

Two weeks before that, a gunman opened fire at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis during morning mass, killing 2 and injuring 21 before committing suicide.

You may have heard about that one, because much of the narrative was spent around the fact that the gunman was trans.

Also in Minnesota, two months before that, Democratic politicians Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman were shot, with Rep. Hortman and her husband succumbing to their wounds.

Of course, I could keep jumping back and back and naming incidents. But there’s two that happened after Charlie Kirk’s death that got lost in the shuffle.

The first was the black student at Delta State University who was found hanged from a tree. This immediately conjured up images of lynchings in the Deep South. Many felt panic, wondering if this was retaliation.

The same day, a white man in Vicksburg was also found hanging from a tree. Being homeless, many wrote that off as a perhaps understandable suicide. But in a state with a history of lynchings, and with tensions on the raise, one could never really know for sure one way or the other if these are connected or if these incidents are indeed lynchings.

In this political climate, I’m not willing to commit to saying I know for sure. But in this political climate, it has become increasingly clear how capable we are of turning on each other.

The second incident I want to mention comes from a supporter within our party. They shared with us that their friend was attacked in Renton, WA by a group of teenagers hurling homophobic insults.

This is unambiguous. This is a hate crime.

This cannot happen.

What is becoming of our countrymen? Growing up, the “Land of the Free” really did feel like the ultimate goal. It felt as though we were getting there. Perhaps it is the optimism of a 12 year old who remembers Obama selling us “Hope”, but it felt like our troubled past might remain there and that our future might truly be bright.

Of course, it wasn’t really that way and things didn’t suddenly take a turn for the worst. This has not happened in a vacuum.

When this country ended apartheid in the United States, which we gently and more kindly referred to as “segregation”, we were perhaps on track to better correct the issues faced following the failures of Reconstruction. The country had the chance to move forward from its past and start anew and do it right.

Instead, we elected Ronald Reagan, an opponent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to President in 1980.

The Republicans enjoyed the White House until 1993 when Bill Clinton took over. It was during the Clinton administration that the second player in this fold comes into play: Newt Gingrich.

These two men, in my view, took an unwillingness to change with the times and turned it into a full-blown Culture War, with their Republican Party as the aggressors.

That Culture War has spiraled. It has gone beyond making Democrats look bad. It’s well past blocking Obama’s agenda. It has developed into US citizens attacking and fighting one another.

We, as countrymen within these United States, have forgotten who our enemy is. The trans person is not your enemy. The Catholic is not your enemy. The people who work for a living are not your enemy.

It is those in power, those that refuse to lose and let go of that power, as well as those who want a piece of and to be apart of that power, that stoke the division into us. The Powers That Be who want us angry and against each other instead of them.

Right now, for all intents and purposes, it is working.

This might not mean much to you now. This might not mean much in a few years when this becomes a time capsule for the political atmosphere in 2025. But it cannot go on with us watching idly and saying nothing.

The Pirate Party, in our platform, promises to make sure that our government is transparent and accountable to the people. But we have a responsibility to hold ourselves accountable to each other.

We, the citizens of these United States of America, cannot turn to violence among one another. You have far more in common with a trans person from the city as a farmer from the sticks than you do with Elon Musk. Your black neighbor will understand you better than Donald Trump could.

Let us never forget who is behind this divide. The Republican Party and the right wing in this country are not “punk rock”, they are not “counterculture”. They hold every major branch of government. They are the government. While I hold contempt in my heart of the spineless democrats who not only allow it to happen, but also emboldened the worse candidates via the Pied Piper strategy, the blame does fall squarely to a group longing for a pre-Civil Rights era.

Do not fall for their propaganda. Remember that they want you divided. Remind them that we are the United States and they are subservient to us, not the other way around.

Love thy neighbor. Beware of false gods.

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What has the EDRi network been up to over the summer? Find out the latest digital rights news in our bi-weekly newsletter. In this edition: age verification gains traction, EU’s deregulation spree risks entire digital rulebook, & more!

The post EDRi-gram, 17 September 2025 appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Jury trials of journalists arrested while reporting news are exceedingly rare in the United States. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) that maintains data on press freedom violations nationwide, has documented only nine in its history.

The next two are scheduled to take place in Kenton County, Kentucky, in just a couple weeks. Journalists Madeline Fening and Lucas Griffith, both of whom were arrested while covering a protest on July 17 for Cincinnati-based CityBeat (Griffith is a student journalist at the University of Cincinnati who interned at CityBeat), are set to be tried Sept. 30 and Oct. 2, respectively. In an unfortunate irony, the protest was in opposition to the immigration detention of Ayman Soliman, who himself fled Egypt to escape persecution for his journalism.

A coalition of press freedom organizations and Cincinnati journalism professors sent a letter to the prosecutor, County Attorney Stacy Tapke, urging her office to drop the case. As the letter explains, when journalists are mistakenly arrested while covering protests, prosecutors usually decline to bring charges because they recognize that protests and their aftermath are newsworthy and journalists reporting on them are just doing their constitutionally protected jobs.

When prosecutors nonetheless push forward with these kinds of censorial charges, the cases often end in a dismissal and a civil settlement paid to the reporter, and those responsible are forced to explain why they wasted taxpayer funds trying to criminalize journalism.

Below are comments from representatives of several press freedom organizations that signed the letter, as well as from journalism professors at the University of Cincinnati (speaking in their individual capacities).

Comment from press freedom advocates

Seth Stern, director of advocacy at FPF, said, “With no end to civil unrest on the horizon, it’s more important now than ever that journalists are allowed to cover how police respond to protests. Officers engaged in misconduct have every incentive to disperse the press, which is precisely why the Department of Justice and courts have said that they can’t be allowed to do so. Even temporary detainments have a chilling effect, but putting journalists on trial for routine newsgathering is simply un-American. We hope prosecutors do the right thing without further delay.

Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), said, “Despite the National Press Photographers Association having spent over a decade providing training to police regarding the First Amendment rights of journalists, it is disturbing that some officers and agencies have not learned to respect those rights. We sincerely hope that the county attorney will remedy this wrong by heeding our request to dismiss the remaining charges and not add insult to injury.”

Anne Marie Tamburro, press freedom strategist at the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), said, “It is inexcusable that journalists in the United States are being put on trial for exercising their First Amendment rights. We urge Kenton County officials to drop all charges and ensure that journalists can do their jobs of keeping the public informed without unwarranted interference from law enforcement.”

Katherine Jacobsen, U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said, “It is concerning to see that two journalists are facing jury trials in relation to their reporting activity. Journalism is not a crime, and reporters should not be punished for covering matters of public interest.”

Comment from journalism professors

Alfred J. Cotton III, director of undergraduate studies, associate professor-educator, journalism at the University of Cincinnati, said, “Lucas Griffith is one of the best student journalists on this campus. He’s a former student of mine, and I believe wholeheartedly in his integrity and dedication to pursuing the truth. I stand with the call to drop the charges against him and Madeline Fening.”

Victoria LaPoe, department head of the Department of Journalism at the University of Cincinnati, said, “While I cannot speak on behalf of the university, I can speak for myself and my personal views. As a former journalist — specifically a television producer who would get out of the newsroom and on the ground to cover trials, protests, and breaking news — I witnessed firsthand how quickly situations can turn chaotic. I believe what is truly at risk here are core constitutional freedoms. The precedent this could set is deeply troubling. Journalists serve as the eyes and ears of an event, allowing citizens to be informed and make their own decisions. I hope it is beyond question that, in this situation, a journalist — and a student intern — should not face such severe charges for simply attempting to serve their community.”

Jenny Wohlfarth, a professor-educator in the Department of Journalism at the University of Cincinnati, added, “Newsgathering is a protected right under the First Amendment. What’s at stake here is not just these two reporters’ fates, but also the fundamental constitutional rights of a free press that are protected for all of us under the First Amendment. In helping prepare the journalists of tomorrow, we educators must teach our students the value of a free press, why it’s so critically important in a democracy, and how they must uphold the highest ethical standards in covering news events, both near and far. Without journalists to cover events like this, the public loses access to credible and accurate information that members of a free press routinely provide to help the public stay informed.”

The charges against the journalists originally included felony rioting, but that charge was dropped in July. The remaining misdemeanor charges against Fening includepressfreedomtracker.us/all-inc…disorderly conduct, obstructing an emergency responder, failure to disperse, unlawful assembly, and obstructing a highway or public passage. Griffith is charged with those offenses plus resisting arrest.

You can read the letter here or below. If you have questions or would like further comment, please reach out to FPF at media@freedom.press, NPPA at lawyer@nppa.org, SPJ at chendrie@hq.spj.org, or CPJ at press@cpj.org.

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Die Piratenpartei ist beim W3C (World Wide Web Consortium, – dem internationalen Gremium zur Standardisierung von Web-Technologien) mit einem besonders datensparsamen Vorschlag zur Altersverifikation im Internet vorgestellig geworden. Das Verfahren arbeitet dezentral und lokal auf dem Gerät des Nutzers. Dadurch werden keinerlei persönliche Daten an den Betreiber einer Webseite übermittelt, während dieser zugleich vom Aufwand einer aufwendigen Altersprüfung entlastet wird.

Unser Konzept sieht vor, dass im Header des Webseiten-Quelltexts oder in App-Protokollen vermerkt wird, ob eine Altersverifikation erforderlich ist. Browser und Apps prüfen diese Angabe standardmässig und erkennen, ob ein Nutzer die zuvor festgelegte Altersfreigabe erfüllt. Diese Lösung lässt sich auch gerätebasiert umsetzen.

Pascal Fouquet, Vizepräsident der Piratenpartei Bern und ehemaliger Leiter des Referendums gegen das Jugendschutzgesetz (www.auszweiszwang-nein.ch): „Das ist eine klassische Win-win-win-Situation: keine Datensammelei über Nutzer, minimaler Aufwand für Webseitenbetreiber – einfach, sicher und schnell umgesetzt.“

Die Lösung der Piratenpartei unterstreicht ihre führende Expertise an der Schnittstelle von Digitalisierung und Politik. Anstatt sich wie andere allein auf die E-ID als vermeintlich unverzichtbare Lösung für die Altersverifikation im Internet zu fixieren, bietet dieses Konzept eine deutlich einfachere, datensparsame und die Privatsphäre wahrende Alternative. Nutzer benötigen keine E-ID und müssen sich nicht auf jeder Webseite ausweisen. Webseitenbetreiber profitieren von minimalem Aufwand, da eine einzige Zeile Code ausreicht. Durch eine Integration beim W3C werden Browserhersteller nahtlos in die Umsetzung eingebunden, was diesen Vorschlag für alle Beteiligten attraktiv und zukunftsweisend macht.

Jorgo Ananiadis, Präsident der Piratenpartei Schweiz: „Die Piraten haben diese Idee bereits im Rahmen des Referendums gegen den Ausweiszwang im Internet vorgeschlagen. Umso mehr stellt sich die Frage, warum sie bislang niemand aufgegriffen hat. Unsere Lösung ist schlicht besser als jede Altersverifikation mit einer E-ID.“

Renato Sigg, Vorstand Piratenpartei Zürich: „Diese Lösung respektiert unsere liberale Gesellschaft und gibt Eltern gleichzeitig die nötigen Mittel zur Hand, um das Kindeswohl zu schützen. Sie ist eine deutlich datensparsamere und weniger aufwändige Variante einer Alterskontrolle als die E-ID.“

Im Folgenden noch Kontext und einige technische Aspekte:
Das W3C arbeitet an einem einfachen Standard, mit dem jede Website im HTML-Header angeben kann, ob sie altersbeschränkte Inhalte enthält. Dies kann über ein simples Meta-Tag geschehen, das Kurzcodes wie p (Pornografie), v (Gewalt), n (keine Beschränkung) und weitere verwendet.
Auf Nutzerseite ist beispielsweise die Jugendschutzfunktion direkt im Browser integriert. Enthält eine Website eingeschränkte Inhalte, wird blokiert oder vor dem Zugriff ein Passwort abgefragt.
Entscheidend ist, dass dieser Vorgang lokal abläuft: Es werden keine persönlichen Daten an Websites übermittelt und es braucht keine zentrale Behörde. Die volle Kontrolle bleibt beim Nutzer.
Für Browserhersteller bedeutet dies lediglich eine kleine zusätzliche Funktionalität – der Aufwand bleibt überschaubar. Auch der Gesetzgeber könnte anstelle einer verpflichtenden Altersverifikation vorschreiben, dass Anbieter eine solche Kategorisierung im Header einfügen.

Alexis Roussel, ehemaliger Co-Präsident der Piratenpartei Schweiz: „Diese Lösung respektiert die Digitale Integrität der Menschen. Die E-ID nicht.“

Weitere Hintergrundinformationen:
Es gibt bereits einen Tag „Restricted to adults“ (RTA), aber erstens definiert dieser nur, dass die Website für Kinder gesperrt ist, ohne eine detaillierte Kategorie wie Glücksspiel, Pornografie oder Gewalt anzugeben. Zweitens wird dieser Tag hauptsächlich von Kinderschutzsoftware oder Suchmaschinen von Drittanbietern verwendet, um ihre SafeSearch-Funktion zu filtern. Drittens ist „<meta name=“RATING“ content=“RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA“ />“ viel länger als nötig.
Ebenfalls gibt es meta-tags mit adult oder family_friendly, die aber auch nur von Suchmaschinen verwendet werden.
Der grosse Unterschied zu den bestehenden Systemen ist, dass in diesem Vorschlag einerseits die Kategorien feingranularer und multidimensional sind, andererseits die Umsetzung standardmässig im Browser oder Gerät sichergestellt wird.

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Trump and the global far-right are trying to discredit Europe’s tech laws with misinformation and political pressure, fearing that these regulations might disrupt their ability to undermine democracy. If Europe wants to safeguard its democracy and its credibility as a global regulatory leader in tech, the European Commission needs to enforce these law swiftly and decisively.

The post Why Europe’s new tech laws have the world on edge appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).