Center for Democracy & Technology

By an overwhelming vote of 663 to 13, the European Parliament passed a resolution that would require the EU Commission to end the secrecy that has enveloped the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). 

The vote is a stinging rebuke of the "lack of a transparent process in the conduct of the ACTA negotiations," according to the resolution.  Writing on the story, the New Zealand Herald says:

EU Parliamentarians have long been incensed that 'no parliamentary approval has been asked for the mandate' (to negotiate an ACTA agreement). As such, the EU Parliament is demanding that they be 'fully informed at all stages of the negotiations.'

The resolution is blunt about the course of action it will take if the EU doesn't reverse course and open up the negotiation process:

Unless Parliament is immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiations, it reserves its right to take suitable action, including bringing a case before the Court of Justice in order to safeguard its prerogatives.

As CDT has previously written, ACTA selectively exports U.S. law.  In that piece, CDT's Andrew McDairmid writes:

In advance of Facebook’s annual developer conference next month, reports have begun to materialize about a seminal new feature that the social networking service may roll out: location sharing. Although there’s no official word from the company yet, the speculation is that Facebook will be introducing features that allow users to share their current location with their friends and allow applications developers to offer location-based services to Facebook users.

If the rumors are true, this will no doubt represent a watershed moment for the nascent location-enabled Web. With hundreds of millions of users who log on each day, the potential for a dramatic increase in the amount of location information shared online is sweeping. Because so many Facebook users access the site from mobile devices like smartphones and laptops that can be automatically located based on wireless signals or GPS, it’s not hard to imagine location data quickly and automatically populating news feeds, wall posts, and posted photos.

How Facebook decides to incorporate privacy protections into its new location features will have an obvious impact on whether the Facebook user community embraces location-sharing. Unfortunately, the story of location privacy on the Web thus far hasn’t quite been a fairytale.

UPDATE 3/13 11:00 AM: I'm at the Community Developer Summit, where panelists are discussing innovative methods of encouraging user-generated content. Adam is joining the Citizen Journalism Brigade, where panelists are discussing how to amplify the voices of citizen journalists.

UPDATE 3/12 3:15 PM: Just enjoyed the "In Code We Trust: Open Government Awesomeness" panel while Adam was surrounded by the Advertising Amalgam at "Smackdown: Consumer Privacy vs. Advertiser Revenue." I'm now waiting for "Selling Your Milk When the Cow is Free," which extols the virtues of using open-source software even when profits are at stake, while Adam attends the annual SXSW must-see "Battledecks," which I am obviously not seeing. Look forward to reports from us on the panels we attended later.

UPDATE 3/12 1:20 PM: We're here at the Austin Convention Center waiting for the festivities to begin! Panels begin in 40 minutes, and we're working on a location data post. Everyone else here is blogging like crazy, why not us? Edit: I lied, still an hour left. I'm still on Eastern Time.

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