This is a guest blog post, written by Jerry Weyer from the Luxembourg Pirate Party

A day in April 2012, 6:30pm. Policemen knock on the door of Sven Clement, President of the Pirate Party Luxembourg, to carry out a search warrant. They take his laptops, smartphones and tablets, he has to follow them to the police station where he is being questioned - the accusation: Sven allegedly "stole" a password written on a Post-It by making a picture of it in a publicly accessible place and allegedly used this password to "hack" into the medical database of the ministry of sports. A few weeks ago Sven received the confirmation that he will be charged with unauthorized access to a protected database and - brace yourself - copyright infringement!

Let's start from the beginning: on January 19th, 2012, Sven's birthday, news gets to the luxembourgish pres that there has been a very serious security problem at the medial database of the ministry of health, containing the medical records of nearly 10% of the total population of Luxembourg. The first reaction of the Minister of Health is frantic panic: in an interview he denounces the "hackers" and "thieves" that will face the prosecution of the government. The facts in no way justify this reaction: the information presented to the press clearly stated that there has been a security problem, that this problem resulted from the incredibly negligent behaviour of the technical and political staff responsible for the database, that the responsible administration dealing with data leaks had immediately been notified and that now, 2 weeks later, this information was given to the press to inform the public of the carelessness of government institution with personal data. No data sets from the database have ever been leaked, till today.

Hi everyone! Well, another Pirate came to help the cause to Brussels. This time it's me - a hyperactive Czech Pirate - Petr. Amelia gave us the opportunity to send people for an internship to her office and I just thought - why not?! This could be a great experience and something totally different from the stuff I do usually (programming in Java and studying artificial intelligence). So I am here now, I came on Monday actually, and the agenda just keeps on coming - helping with coordination of the European Pirate parties, Data protection regulation and everything connected to it. Don't worry, I'll update you about everything important from now on.

If you are wondering, who I am actually, I can give you a short description of my background. I joined the Czech Pirates some year and a half ago, just in time to jump into the fight against ACTA. And before I knew it, I was standing in the middle of the town square and having a speech of the importance of individual freedom in front of hundreds and at -20 degrees. Afterwards the PPI GA Prague 2012 was organized and again, somehow I found myself in the middle of things, helping with organisation. See the keynote from Rick Falkvinge, Cory Doctorow's speech and Amelia's speech to remind you of the atmosphere at the conference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBrk7kb-YSs

The French government should be now working on a possible legislative proposal on Net Neutrality. It received an opinion from the Conseil National du Numerique (CNN) which contains strange recommendations which waters down, if not could kill, Net Neutrality.

Wrong legal framework

The CNN recognises that freedom of speech is not enough protected with today’s threat of blocking, filtering…and therefore NN deserves the statute of fundamental right standing on the top of the law hierarchy, having a kind of constitutional value.

It’s great, we agree with that! That is why the CNN proposes the French government to put NN in…An old, basic law of 1986  that was passed to liberalise the TV sector and enable private broadcasters to emit.

It is very strange that the Net neutrality of the internet is part of this law that was set up for the TV sector, where communication goes in one way, via very few canals and is centralised, all of these not really applying to the internet concept! Doh n°1

The result of this strange integration would be that right after the beginning of article 1of the law stating that electronic communication to the public should be free, net neutrality would have to be applied the list of limitation to the free communication principle also embodied in the same article, and which includes the respect of human dignity, the right of property and childhood protection. Those limitations are of course excessively used by private actors to justify discrimination and fundamental rights violation on the internet.

sometimes you feel that you just need to change scenery for a few days. I had that feeling some weeks ago and asked Amelia if I could take a few days of and visit Prague. Amelia, always quick to see possibilities, gladly accepted under the condition that I meet with the Czech Pirates while there and briefed them on the current Data Protection Regulation that we work with in the Parliament (and in cooperation with civil society).

Said and done I contacted the Czech Pirates and found out that my planned trip overlapped with their four year birthday celebration. So there would already be a big pirate gathering on the Friday during my stay in Prague which could easily be merged with a discussion on Data Protection.

After two days of leisure I headed over to the tea house where the Czech pirates hosted their gathering. Arriving a quarter past four, fifteen minutes after scheduled time, I found myself early. But that gave me time  to share some words with the independent Czech senator Libor Michálek, who got elected into the Czech Senate supported by the Pirates, the Greens and the Christian Democrats in 2012. As an independent senator he still keeps a good contact with the pirates who got him elected.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJl5zvIzJus&feature=youtu.be