Jag skickade nyss ut ett pressmeddelande där jag försöker kortfattat förklara bakgrunden till ett förslag som rönt viss uppmärksamhet bland datasäkerhetsexperter de senaste veckorna.

Yesterday the European Parliament voted on an agreement between the EU and the United States Passenger Name Records, PNR (results here). There is a quite good summary of the agreement and the process leading up to it on EUObserver.

The European Parliament has decided to continue their political scrutiny of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), with the intention of reaching a decision before summer. Today the Committee for International Trade decided not to ask the Court of Justice of the European Union if ACTA is compatible with the framework agreements.

Fresh from Romanian broadcaster ProTV, an ACTA special from România te iubesc (no subtitles) featuring yours truly, the Romanian Partidul Piraților, Constantin Vică, and two of my Romanian colleagues.

I just came back to Brussels after having visited the conference V 4 Paradigm Shift in Copyright in Budapest, Hungary. "V 4" stands for Visegrád 4, and means the four Central European countries Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia.

"The security industry doesn't have a lobby, common sense doesn't have a lobby, technical excellence doesn't have a lobby," he said. "We need to get involved in layers eight and nine – the economic and political spheres. In the coming decade the future of the internet will be decided not by IETF, but by people outside it, and that worries me. I'm not sure they'll do a great job."

In Romania, they were hit very hard by the recent cold weather that suddenly swept in over most of southern Europe, allegedly from Siberia. People died, not as many as in Ukraine, but nevertheless people in the European Union are dying from cold in 2012. In an interesting charity campaign, several large Romanian telecommunications operators decided to extend preferential deals to their customers in areas heavily affected by snow.

Prices on telecommunications in Spain lower, vertical integration higher

Spanish courts admits submission of complaint against Ley Sinde/Wert

The Polish political magazine Political Critique published an article with me about ACTA (in Polish, see also