Sitter här och läser igenom Carl Bildts rapportering om Tunisien som består av... Kritik mot Ryssland!!. Carl Bildt lyckas på ett utmärkt sätt koppla ihop Tunisiens uppror med antalet barn födda i Ryssland de senaste åren.

I ett liknande trick, som helt går emot EU-regeringarnas icke-svar på Tunisiens kris, anmärker hans kollegor från Moderaterna på bristen på sanktioner mot Vitryssland som bland annat föreslås innefatta visum-begränsningar. Detta efter att Vitryssland lagt sig för EU:s krav för att undvika sanktioner. Håhåjaja.

Medan Bildt oroar sig för de ryska barnen framhåller han EU:s svar på situationen som faktiskt inte varit särskilt starkt. Med undantag för ett franskt utspel om att hjälpa tunisiska polisen (som inte mottogs väl av fransoserna) har medlemsstaternas regeringar inte verkat lyfta fram frågan alls i media. Catherine Ashtons reaktion är visserligen kraftfull men EU:s höga representant har ännu ingen stark position i sig själv utan hämtar sin auktoritet främst från medlemsstaternas regeringar. Bildt måste ta detta i beaktan när han lägger all energi på Ryssland.

Ganska ofarlig, ganska mjuk. Går bra ihop med barn. Näbblan - liten, söt, äter ogärna men när den blir lite äldre kan den äta maskar.

Jag har flera källor på att det på engelska kan funka med beakling och att det på nederländska blir snafeltje. På spanska uppenbarligen piquitita.

Notifiera Fredrik Lindström! Omedelbums!

It's not easy to know what the truth is sometimes. Or how it's communicated. In Tunisia the military is switching sides and winning the confidence of the people. The military switching sides is a sign of great distrust in the current regime and could very well make it fall. A problem with a military take-over is of course that a new military regime will take Ben Ali's place (see for instance Madagascar, Chile, Argentina, Mauretania). On the other hand, the military sometimes intervenes for the better, like when corruption was weeded out of Bangladesh after the military put its foot down and said "No more" (bear in mind, the people rioted against). That's me being overly negative - the benefits are greater than the disadvantages, for instance in the fact that police officers will not go around killing and maiming civilians which is a great up.

Another big event today is that Ben Ali has issues an order to release all prisoners and detainees arrested since the riots began. The Minister of Internal Affairs, he says, has handled this situation exceptionally badly which is, undoubtfully, very true. The question is on whose orders, if anyone's, he acted badly.

Piratpartiet issued a press release which is, after some careful and perhaps even cowardly (on my part, at least) cautious in its optimism.

I realise that I may sound slightly sarcastic about the parliament's efforts to be diplomatic when I'm picking out only the parts of Tunisian praise.

Actually the parliament has, at times, been very critical of the development of human rights in Tunisia. See for example the parliamentary debate from February 2010 where all political groups praise the Tunisian developments except Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL who say:

You have all rightly pointed out that Tunisia was our first partner to sign an association agreement. This is true, and that is why all this is very worrying, because we are not talking here about gaps, Commissioner, or about small steps. No. There is a huge, ongoing decline in human rights and democracy in Tunisia.

Hélène Flautre, Greens

Since September [2009], there has been a real drift towards an authoritarian police state, as the case of Taoufik Ben Brik, who will be tried next Saturday, shows. However, we could also mention Zouhair Makhlouf and Fahem Boukadous, one of whom was convicted for talking about the environmental conditions in his country, and the other for taking part in workers’ demonstrations in his country.

Yes, this is the social situation in Tunisia. Human rights defenders such as Kamel Jendoubi, Sihem Bensedrine, Sana Ben Achour, and Kemais Chamari are victims of a disgraceful press campaign. Sadok Chourou has been rotting in jail for the last 16 years, and Radhia Nasraoui, who acts as his lawyer, has been dragged through the mud, her career permanently damaged.

Marie-Christine Vergiat, GUE/NGL

At my boyfriend's house we're both involved in pirate politics and have been following the Tunisian situation very closely. This means the information flow is high from every possible angle and when he's been following and updating me on the groundwork, I've been tracking the EU-Tunisia relations from 1995 forward.

In 1995 Tunisia was the first of the Magreb countries to conclude an association agreement with the EU. This means increased cooperation around trade and immigration issues. The relationship has grown deeper over the years and reach a sort of culmination point last year in Februari, when the parliament evaluated the latest free trade agreement from 2008.

Of course the European Parliament does not have the time to follow all activites the European Commission and the member states have with Tunisia, but some resolutions adopted by the parliament may still hold an indication of their positions.

Human rights are approximately in the middle of the agenda. Highest on the agenda is more trade and better cooperation around borders and immigration. Around 2007, I had this thing for DG Security, and during the French presidency I followed President Sarkoszy's efforts to conclude a Mediterranean agreement on, among other things, immigration. The parliament was supporting these activities in a resolution from 2005, and supported it conditionally in two resolutions since then. The parliament really deserves credits for conditioning the deepening of border cooperation on human rights strengthening efforts.

Hemma hos pojkvännen har vi diskuterat Tunisien en del över de senaste dagarna. Eftersom vi båda engagerat oss i piratpolitik och speciellt situationen i Tunisien flödar informationen från alla möjliga vinklar. Jag har, i en kraftsträngning, följt Tunisiens relation till EU sedan 1995.

1995 slöt Tunisien som första land i Magrebregionen ett associationsavtal med EU. Det innebär ökat samarbete kring handel och flyktingfrågor. Sedan dess har relationen gradvis fördjupats inom dessa områden och nådde en sorts topp i februari förra året, då en utvärdering av det senaste frihandelsavtalet från 2008 blev föremål för diskussion i parlamentet.

Givetvis täcker parlamentets arbete inte upp alla aktiviteter kommissionen och medlemsländerna haft med Tunisien över året, men de resolutioner parlamentet antagit relaterat EU-Tunisien-samarbete är ändå ganska talande.

Mänskliga rättigheter står i mitten av agendan. Högst upp står emfasen på bättre handel och gränssamarbete. Runt 2007, när jag under franska ordförandeskapet följde Sarkoszys ansträngningar för ett Medelshavssamarbete stod det mycket klart att invandring var en hög prioritet för de sydeuropeiska länderna. Detta har parlamentet tydligt stött i en resolution sedan 2005, och villkorligt stött i två andra. Parlamentet ska ha heder för en resolution från 2006 som villkorade immigrationskontroll med att mänskliga rättigheter stärks i Magrebregionen.

Major protests broke out in Tunisia following the self-immolation of a student in late December. The demonstrators are protesting unemployment and government violence, and as opposed to a previous norm of protests from spontaneous worker unions the recent uprisal seem to engaged a much larger part of the population to participate. The unemployment protesters were joined by net activists causing an alarm around the extensive web filtering and repression of journalists, soon followed by international assistance from Anonymous groups and OP:Tunisia. Several government agencies have been DDoS:ed or had their webpages defaced.

The Tunisian dictatorship has responded with riot police and arrests starting late December 2010 with several arrests of lawyers.

In Europe the issue started getting media attention a few days ago. Reporting up until that point had been scarce but is now spreading through several international venues, especially in the European Union. In a response that might be related, late afternoon yesterday the dictatorship started arresting a large number of Tunisian information activists and journalists. While Tunisian bloggers have been subject to disappearances, arrests and torture in the past, actions against them have not previously been this large in scale.

Europakommissionen har öppnat en konsultation om dataskyddsdirektivet från 1995 som alltså har dödslinjen 15 januari inte 12 januari som jag felaktigt hävdade igår.

Undantaget bristande implementering av EU-direktivet i flertalet medlemsstater har jag funderat över hur bristande skydd mot bland annat profilering skulle kunna åtgärdas. Profilering är när ett företag eller en stat samlar stora (eller mindre) mängder information om en individ för att på så sätt kunna uttyda individens vidare handlingar eller egenskaper. Google adWords är ett bra exempel, liksom ICA:s kundkort och tillhörande reklamutskick. Datalagringsdirektivets ambitioner att via kommunikationsmönster förutsäta i vilken utsträckning den för datainsamlingen berörda individen eller dess kamrater kan utgöra en risk för sina medmänniskor eller staten är ett annat exempel.

Jerry Brito skrev för många år sedan en uppsats om ofarligheten med kommersiell profilering via RFID-chip. Han menar bland annat att kommersiella företag kommer ha mycket få incitament att samköra databaser för att kartlägga individer. Om det inte vore för mergers skulle jag vara benägen att hålla med, men jag ser också att flertalet stora företag tar över en så stor del av våra kommunikationsflöden att skyddet mot profilering knappast blir adekvat (sammanslagningar av försäkringsbolag och privat sjukvård skulle till exempel kunna utgöra ett problem, men blir likaledes problematiskt när staten själv uppmuntrar sammanslagningen, som i den nederländska implementeringen av e-journaler).

The European Commission has opened a consultation on the Data Protection Directive from 1995 which has a submission deadline of January 15, not January 12 as I wrongly reported yesterday.

Apart from flawed implementations of data protection in member states I've pondered how a lack of protection for data abuse, and particularly profiling, could be fixed. Profiling is the process through which a state or a private enterprise collection large (or small) amounts of information about individuals to predict characteristics or future behaviour of that individual. Google adWords is an example, as is the Delhaize Plus Card. The Data Retention Directive from 2006 is also an effort to map the communication and movement patterns of individuals for easy determination of the risk they may or may not pose to their fellow citizens or the nation state.

American analyst Jerry Brito commented on his perceived lack of danger of RFID-chip profiling many years ago. He suggests that commercial entities will have very few incentives to coordinate databases for the purpose of profiling individuals. If it weren't for mergers I'd be prepared to agree, but I also see that such a small number of large enterprises are taking over such a large part of our communication flows that privacy or anonymity protection could hardly be considered adequate (an example of which could be the merging of insurance companies and private health care, or, as is the case of the Dutch implementation of e-Dossiers, state mandated merging).