Dear All,

We wanted to update you regarding status of our Fench server in Roubaix, and plans to re-launch a server in Switzerland.

France

On the 29th of June, we released a news article on the unavailability of our VPN server in Roubaix. Read more.

We are continuing to follow this up with the reseller, while looking for an alternative solution. We apologise again for this inconvenience.

Switzerland

We are very happy to announce that at the end of this week, TUVPN will be launching a new server in Switzerland.

We will be publishing a news relase to confirm its launch.

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The US Commerce Committee met last Wednesday to discuss bills on privacy issues. Obama's administration and industry representatives, as well as federal regulators working in the sphere of consumer protection and telecommunications issues, also took part in the meeting.

Should the proposed legislation be approved, it will become the first comprehensive privacy law in US history. It will encompass the issues of e-commerce and personal information theft, and will designate the course of action  for companies if their customers’ information should be compromised. The creation of the new legislation is aimed to replace the state laws that are in force now.

One of the bills under consideration, that  prohibits companies to track consumers without giving them prior notification, has caused a lot of disagreements among the participants at the meeting. For example, Senator Pat Toomey, a member of Commerce's Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance subcommittee, claims that nowadays many people voluntarily place their personal information on social networking sites. He affirms that the new privacy rules could “break the Internet,” because “different consumers have different expectations about privacy.”

Senator Toomey calls on his colleagues to thoroughly consider the new rules before accepting them. "I'm sure no one on this committee wants to break the internet, or limit many of the popular online services that consumers can access, in order to avoid fundamentally altering the current online experience in creating these unintended consequences. I just urge that we all proceed with caution," he asserted.

However, other participants at the Wednesday hearing, including  Julie Brill, Federal Trade Commissioner, Senators John Kerry and John Rockefeller, consider that protecting Internet privacy is very important for consumers. They claim that the new legislation will not restrict the activity of online companies but  that it will make  more transparent what kind of information about users they collect, giving the users the opportunity to choose whether to share this information or not.

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Last week the US Department of Commerce released a report entitled “Cybersecurity, Innovation and the Internet Economy.” This report appeared after the range of Internet security policy recommendations developed by the Obama administration.

The document emphasizes the importance of the companies providing online services for the development of the economy. Gary Locke, Secretary of Commerce, claimed that their "economy depends on the ability of companies to provide trusted, secure services online. As new cybersecurity threats evolve, it's critical that we develop policies that better protect businesses and their customers to ensure the Internet remains an engine for economic growth."

The paper offers ways to strengthen security for companies that do the major part of their businesses on the Internet, like social networks, providers of online services and cloud computing firms. Such companies are included in the “Internet and Information Innovation Sector” (I3S).

To reinforce internet security and reach a high level of web anonymity and online privacy protection, the report gives some recommendations. First of all it is important to implement voluntary codes of conduct to eliminate security vulnerabilities. For example, for better protection companies may start using automated security or Domain Name System Security (DNSSEC) protocols. Moreover, it is of crucial importance to enhance international exchange of cybersecurity best practices and develop incentives for the companies to succeed in this sphere.

Use the following link to read the report: http://www.nist.gov/itl/upload/Cybersecurity_Green-Paper_FinalVersion.pdf.

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy has organised the e-G8 forum, and has invited personalities like Mark Zuckerberg,  co-founder of  Facebook, Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive of Amazon and other famous and powerful names in the circle of Internet and media.

Participants of the forum are going to discuss issues such as Internet regulations, the influence of the Internet on society and economy, protection of Internet privacy, protection of copyright and the right to web anonymity. The results of the event will be reported to the G8 Summit, that opens in Deauville later this week.

The delegates have different opinions about governmental regulation of the Internet. Google and Amazon consider  the interference of governments to be unacceptable, because it violates users’ rights. European companies, on the other hand, think that it is necessary to control the Internet in order to eradicate cybercrime.

In a speech given last year, Nicolas Sarkozy showed his vision of the problem: "The Internet is the new frontier, a territory to be conquered. But it cannot be like the Wild West. It cannot be a lawless place, where people are allowed to pillage artistic works with no limits".

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Russia is going to create its own web laws and wants the other countries to share their experience of regulating the use of Internet. The Russian government will analyse the best examples of web regulation in other countries before drafting the new legislation.

Recently, the Russian Federal Security Service asked for access to communication services such as Skype and Gmail. The agency claimed that the "uncontrolled use of these services could lead to a large-scale threat to Russian security".

Russian internet users are afraid of the government extending web censorship. They also worry about protecting their internet privacy once the new laws are passed. These concerns became stronger after hacker attacks on the LiveJournal blogging site that led to a close down of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's blog during more than one hour.

However, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin understated the danger of web censorship. He claimed that "the Internet is a tool for solving social and administrative problems; it is an opportunity to communicate, to express yourself, it is a tool for improving your living standards" and expressed his opinion that "it is not possible to restrict anything."

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The European Data Retention Directive has sparked serious concerns from privacy and IT security experts since it was approved in 2006. And now, the European Commission is going to review its data retention policy. It is conceded that the European Data Retention Directive does not always adequately protect privacy or personal data.

According to the Directive, member states have to store citizens' telecommunications data for up to 24 months. Police and security agencies have the right to request access to details such as IP address and times of every email, phone call and text message. Requests for the information are allowed via court orders.

The Commission has said that it will review its data retention strategy after considering their evaluation report, which was published a few days ago. The report says that data retention limits a person's right to privacy and that protection safeguards are required to prevent security breach.

The UK Open Rights Group called the Directive's evaluation a 'whitewash'. The European Digital Rights organization produced a spoof evaluation report claiming that the Directive was an "unprecedented violation of the fundamental rights of 500 million Europeans."

The report says that courts in Germany, Romania and the Czech Republic all rejected the Directive as 'unconstitutional'. The report finds that EU member countries interpret the data retention differently, making some national laws inconsistent with others.

The European Commission is going to harmonize the approach to data retention laws for EU members. Among the things to be considered are:

•    shortening the time to retain data for;
•    ensuring an independent authority to monitor all data requests;
•    limiting the number of authorities that can access the private data.

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Talking about privacy, Internet has long been a territory for open debates. EU and United States officials have started developing privacy regulations on how companies such as Facebook and Google should handle users' personal data. The European Commission pulls for protecting Internet privacy and for enforcing companies holding data to allow users to delete it from websites, ensuring their “right to be forgotten”.

Any company operating in the EU or any online system that is targeted at EU consumers must comply with EU rules. The European Commission endows national privacy watchdogs to control legal proceedings even outside Europe. It may cause some tension, as many companies amongst the biggest and most successful  have U.S. based servers, search engines and other data resources.

Though the basic understanding of the rules is similar accross the EU.and U.S. officials, their further implementation may be different. The main debates fall on two controversial points: EU officials determined that companies should get specific permission from users before they use their personal data, whilst  U.S. regulators are unclear on this matter. The right to be forgotten is also an ambiguous concept for U.S. regulators, as they stand for a broader definition of freedom of information and web anonymity.

Some huge companies support the official attempts to align the regulations, as it might help creating clearer and more common rules. And that might turn out to be the hardest task – privacy rules vary greatly even within the EU, and a multinational company might face difficulties trying to comply with all EU countries regulations.

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This week a new regulation aiming to protect Internet privacy is being discussed in the European Union. According to it, social networking sites and search engines will have to report on the private information they have collected. The European Commission is also planning to introduce the “right to be forgotten” policy, which will allow users to withdraw the personal information they no longer wish to share from different sites and social networks.

These regulations will apply not only to EU residents, but to all products and services widely-spread among European citizens. Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, has announced that any company operating in the EU market or any online product that is targeted at EU consumers must comply with EU rules.

To enforce the new regulations, the EU is planning to organize special comitees which will be endowed with powers to investigate and engage in legal proceedings against non-EU data controllers.

Along with legal measures, software development is going to be evaluated. This will include some privacy safeguards initially embedded into web products, for example the “do not track” option in Internet browsers. It will allow users to maintain a high level of Web anonymity.

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