The Federal Agency for State Protection and Counterterrorism (abbreviated BVT in German) is one of the most powerful institutions in Austria. Yet there is hardly any other organization of similar disrepute. There is no party which does not address deficiencies and the need for improvement. Foreign…

Austria has been working on an electronic identity – e-ID in short – for quite some time now. Recent discussions on this type of electronic identification have focused on the electronic driving license, which is to be introduced in spring 2021. The draft legislation proposed by the federal…

South Korea's network infrastructure may be state of the art, but the country’s 'pay to play' regime for delivering traffic are a unprecedented threat to the free and open internet.

Open Net Korea, along with 13 other NGOs — including epicenter.works and Access Now — are appealing to South…

On September 3rd the Austrian government released a legislative package to tackle online hate speech. Besides a comprehensive justice reform, the package also contains a bill that creates new obligations for online platforms to remove illegal user-generated content. This article offers a first…

The Open Internet Regulation 2015/2120 forms the legal basis for the net neutrality protections that are in effect in the EU. The Regulation foresaw that the net neutrality rules would be evaluated by 30 April 2019, roughly three and a half years after the Regulation came into effect, and while the…

This February we have celebrated our 10 year anniversary as an association. At the time, we enjoyed our little office party and we had no idea about what we would soon be faced with: the Corona crisis, for which we outlined implications and recommendations for digital rights right away. Not only did…

Nobody took data protection into account for the so-called “Supplementary Register for Other Concerned Parties” (Ergänzungsregister für sonstige Betroffene). The Ministry for the Economy and the Finance Ministry are responsible for a data breach to which the Austrian Economic Chambers were an…

Experts from epicenter.works, noyb.eu and SBA Research evaluated the Austrian Red Cross' "Stopp Corona" app for data security and privacy. No critical security gaps were found, but some potential for improvement in data protection implementation was identified. 

Many recommended improvements have…

This is the start of a pandemic. The new challenges facing our society are enormous and we can only overcome them by working together. We all have to stick together and contribute towards shared solutions. At the moment, the most important thing we can do is follow the recommendations of the health…

Last week, epicenter.works submitted legal analysis on the draft legislation on Consumer Protection Cooperation. This bill introduces a wide range of powers for consumer protection organisations to block websites, seize domains and oblige hosters to delete information that it deems dangerous or…