On Tuesday 14 January, European Digital Rights (EDRi) and 41 more organizations, including Homo Digitalis, sent an open letter to the European Commission requesting transparency during the implementation the EU Copyright Directive.

With this letter, we ask the Commission to publish any documents and guidelines it will draft on the topic. We also ask for the proposals submitted by the co-signing organizations to be taken into account during the drafting of such guidelines.

You may read the full letter here.

On 8 January 2020, Privacy International and more than 50 other organizations, including Homo Digitalis, sent an open letter to the Alphabet Inc. CEO, Mr. Sundar Pichai.

With this letter, the co-signing organizations, ask Google to take immediate measures to prohibit the use of pre-installed applications on Android smartphones, which constitute a threat to privacy of the users.

These applications are currently permitted to operate outside the Android security protocols. It is notable that 91% of the said apps are not available in Google Play.

These pre-installed apps are usually found in cheap Android smartphones and permit the use of the camera or the microphone, or even access to the device location.

However, privacy and personal data protection are not luxuries, but human rights!

You may read the full letter here and also participate in this campaign here.

On Friday 3 January 2020, Homo Digitalis sent an open letter to the Minister of Digital Governance, Mr. Kyriakos Pierrakakis, regarding the ePrivacy Regulation

We sent this letter following another letter sent on 11 October 2019 to the Minister. With this second letter, we ask the Minister to support during 2020 the adoption of an ePrivacy Regulation by the Council of Europe; this Regulation shall enhance the level of protection of digital rights and freedoms for all Greek citizens.

Despite the fact that the draft ePrivacy Regulation was not adopted by the Council on 22 November 2019, Member States may start again negotiations to adopt a Regulation, which shall enhance the privacy of European citizens on electronic communications.

If the draft Regulation is fully rejected, the European Commission shall draft a new proposal for the Regulation, thus, leading to a big delay. This delay shall mean less protection for people’s privacy.

You may read the letter in Greek here.

Anastasia Karagianni, member of Homo Digitalis gave a talk at TEDx Lesvos on September 29, 2019, which was held in Municipal Theatre of Mytilene. Anastasia experienced a strange incident with her smartphone which then becomes the trigger to change her view of online theory.

How can her smartphone know her favourite milk and suggest it to her?

Where is the moral line of privacy and what happens when private companies and governments cross that line?

You can watch her talk here.

Today, 3 January 2020, Homo Digitalis sent an open letter to the Greek Data Protection Authority, communicating the violation of article 53 of Law 4624/2019 by the Greek Police.

According to this provision, all law enforcement authorities in Greece must publish general, easily accessible and understandable information on their websites regarding their data processing activities. Such information are for instance the way of communication with the data controller and the rights of the data subject.

The website of the Greek Police and the Ministry of Citizen Protection do not contain such information.

With 5 months having already passed from the adoption of Law 4624/2019, we submitted that non-compliance of the Greek Police with the said provision constitutes an important obstacle to the actual protection of people’s rights.

We have contacted the Greek Police on the issue twice: on 19 November 2019 and 3 December 2019. We did not receive any response.

Therefore, we communicated this violation to the President of the Greek Data Protection Authority.

Our letter and all relevant documents are available in Greek here.

Civil society organisation AlgorithmWatch has published on its website an article on the use of face recognition technology by law enforcement authorities in European Union countries. Homo Digitalis’s Lefteris Chelioudakis had the honour to participate in this research.

According to the survey data, at least 10 member states of the EU already use relevant application of face recognition, while many countries including Greece have already planned its immediate implementation.

Specifically in Greece, on Saturday 14/12/2019, an official statement was issued on the website of the Ministry of Citizen Protection where is widely publicised that Hellenic Police Directorate has signed a contract with INTRACOM TELECOM company fot the supply of “Smart Policing” System amounting to 4 million Euro.

According to the new technical specifications issue in the context of implementing these measures, as it has been published on Hellenic Police’s website in April 2018 and in particular on pages 5/178 and 147/178 inter alia, one of this measure’s purposes is the delivery to the Greek Police of a software of photography profile recognition, through which the comparison between digital files and pictures of persons will be conducted  in order to identify and verify citizens, vehicles and security documents. In fact, as it appears on page 5/178 of the same document,there’s no such availability of facial recognition as of today. In DIAVGEIA has been published the allocation decision of the results in the public tender for this action in INTRACOM TELECOM on March 2019, while the mentioned company has published the said project on its website in July 2019.

Hellenic Police already participates (from August 2018 till July 2021) in a research programme of of the European Union, named SPIRIT (“Scalable privacy preserving intelligence analysis for resolving identities”), please see available information here.

Homo Digitalis today on December 16, 2019 submitted an open letter to the Minister of Citizen Protection, Mr. Michalis Chrisochoidis  in order to ask more information regarding the contract with the company Intracom Telecom (registration number: 20977/17.12.2019). We also seek additional information so as whether the Ministry of Citizen Protection complies with the provisions of Law 4624/2019 on impact assessments on the protection of personal data, especially bearing in mind the prior consultation with the Hellenic Data Protection Authority (Articles 65 and 67). You can read our letter here.

Also, the contract referred to Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), which according to an article published in the newspaper “To Vima” such technology is already in use since the summer of 2019. We would like to remind you that recently the Austrian Constitutional Court ruled out that the use of ANPR technology by the Austrian police authorities is infringing the national Constitution.

Finally, Homo Digitalis has submitted an official request to the European Union asking for access to information related to the SPIRIT program, in which the Hellenic Police Directorate participates, and the pilot implementation of that project in Greece. You can learn more here.

On 8th-11th November, the annual conference of European digital rights organizations, Freedom Not Fear 2019 was held in Brussels.

We are very happy that our organization was represented in the conference by the following members: Mr Lefteris Chelioudakis, Mr Konstantinos Kakavoulis, Ms Anastasia Karagianni, Ms Mariliza Baka, Ms Emilia Givropoulou, Mr Yiannis Konstantinidis and Mr Nikos Ioannidis.

In fact, Homo Digitalis was pleased to host a workshop on the state of digital rights in Greece and regarding the Facebook Content Moderation Center, which operates in Athens, as recently revealed.

Ms Emilia Givropoulou was also pleased to have a talk with German MEP Patrick Brayer on European legislation and practice on terrorist content.

Finally, members of Homo Digitalis visited the European Parliament and discussed with MEPs on human rights regulation in the modern digital age.

Homo Digitalis has been an avid supporter of Freedom Not Fear 2019.

We are setting our meeting for next year!

On November 5, 2019 Homo Digitalis was invited by the Parents-Guardians Association of the Music School of Larisa.

Homo Digitalis’s members: Mr Konstantinos Kakavoulis, Ms Anastasia Karagianni and Mr Anastasios Arabatzis gave a speech to parents and students of secondary and high school regarding cyberbullying and digital footprint.

Homodigitalis’s Interlocutor at the event was Mr Dimitris Liovas, Informatics and New Technologies Officer of Secondary Education level of Larisa.

We are delighted to be invited by the Parents-Guardians Association and would like to thank for the excellent organisation of the event. Special thanks to the Leader of the Parents-Guardians Association, Mr Antonios Sotiriou.

This was the first event taken place outside Athens. Stay tuned, as there are more to come!

Homo Digitalis had the great honor and pleasure to attend and give a speech at the second meeting of the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) Working Group on Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity.

CEPS is a well-known think tank with high research activity and influence on European Union issues. Our organization was represented by Mr Lefteris Chelioudakis.

In our speech, we focused our attention on the “Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence” published in April 2019 by the European Commission’s High- Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence. (AI HLEG).

In particular to this, we set forth our observations on four (4) of the requirements set by the Expert Group on Reliable Artificial Intelligence, namely “Human agency and oversight”, “Privacy and Data governance”, “Transparency” and “Diversity, non -discrimination and fairness”.

We would like to thank the Head of the Working Group, Mr Lorenzo Pupillo, and his Rapporteur, Mr Stefano Fantin, for their kind invitation.

You can find out more about the event and its schedule here.