ePrivacy Directive

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has published an Opinion on the current Network Neutrality discussions, making the interesting point that blocking, filtering and traffic management activities may affect privacy as well as their more obvious impact on access to services.

Although its main concern is the more general application of consent to data processing a new Opinion from the Article 29 Working Party also provides the first positive hint I’ve seen from regulators on what they think an acceptable cookie interface might look like. Although this is a helpful development – statements from other regulators have mostly concerned what was not acceptable – their ideas still seem to raise significant technical and legal issues.

The law graduate in me having gone to lie down with a headache from trying to understand the implications of the new UK cookie law, the maths graduate is having a look at it. So the following bears no relation to legal thinking; since it's ten years since I ran a web server it may also bear little relation to what's actually feasible! So please don't quote me in discussions of those aspects.

The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive)(Amendment) Regulations 2011 have now been published, amending the previous Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 as required by the new EC Telecommunications Directives.