Naked Citizens campaign launch

This afternoon Open Rights Group headed over to Facebook’s offices in Covent Garden, London. We delivered a new report about the Data Protection Regulation. We were there to launch a campaign to make sure this proposed law strengthens our privacy rights.

(More pictures are up on our Flickr site.)

The Data Protection Regulation was proposed by the European Commission last year and is currently being discussed by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). It could give us more control over what happens to our personal information and make sure those that use it are help to account.

But a number of the changes that MEPs are currently discussing could instead strip us of our privacy rights. Many of these stem from an unprecedented lobbying effort by big US tech companies, the US Government and the advertising industry.

NakedCitizens.eu is a response to this, put together by a coalition of privacy groups from across the EU including ORG, Privacy International, EDRi and Bits of Freedom. 

Our report, put together by privacy experts from this coalition, features new analysis of proposed amendments to the Regulation and reveals how many of these threaten to critically undermine the privacy of EU consumers and citizens. 

Together, the amendments are an effort to strip EU citizens ‘naked’ by making it almost impossible for them to control who sees their personal information and how it is used.

Instead of empowering users to take control of their information, we may end up with a Regulation that would allow businesses, institutions or organisations to collect and share personal information in opaque, unaccountable ways.

Visit the website NakedCitizens.eu and write to your MEP. Ask them to make sure we get stronger privacy rights and more control over how our personal information is used. Don’t let corporations strip us of our privacy rights!