Save the Date: Privacy Camp on 26 January 2016 in Brussels, Belgium

We are pleased to announce the upcoming Privacy Camp, the pre-CPDP civil society meeting jointly organised by EDRi, Privacy Salon vzw, USL-B and VUB-LSTS. Our theme this year is: “The multiple ways of (de/self-) regulation: What is at stake for human rights?” Please save the date in your calendars and send us your logo if you wish to support the event.

Date: 26 January 2016, 9.00 – 17.30
Location:Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles, Boulevard du Jardin Botanique 43, 1000 Brussels

EU policy-makers are frequently yielding to business pressure to reduce ‘burdensome’ regulation which are in place to protect the citizens. The last few years have seen an intensifying push in the EU to undermine regulations, with the TTIP negotiations and the blocking of Data Protection Reform being the most striking examples. The narratives of ‘economic growth’, ‘competitiveness’ and ‘innovation’ mostly fronted by big tech companies are offered as the justification for this trend towards forms of ‘deregulation’ and ‘self-regulation’. These rhetorics have been taken up and advanced to shape policy decisions and marginalise regulatory oversight. Whose interests are reflected in such discourses and in the initiatives of ‘smart regulation’, ‘cutting red tape’ and ‘openness’? What are the fallacies of reliance on self-regulatory regimes in the wake of sweeping surveillance programmes and the CJEU’s safe harbour ruling? The upcoming edition of Privacy Camp aims to unpack the current deregulatory agenda to analyse its claims, promises and discontents, and chart its main implications for civil and human rights.

Privacy Camp 2016 is kindly supported by the Open Society Foundations and the ARC project Why Regulate? led by the IES USL-B.

About
Privacy Camp is an annual civil society meeting held the day before the start of CPDP. The event brings together digital rights advocates, members of NGOs, civil rights groups as well as academics and policy-makers from all around Europe and beyond to discuss the most pressing issues facing human rights online.