APC member Computer Aid is urging the UK government to take action against the illegal dumping of e-waste (computers, hard drives, cd roms, etc.) in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria and China. It is calling on the government to provide adequate funding for the Environment Agency to effectively police and prevent e-waste from being exported to the developing world. The campaign also targets commercial traders that are abusing re-use and recycling initiatives and computer manufacturers that are turning a blind eye to their equipment being dumped in these countries.

Smelled like a revolutionary spirit around Popinci, central Bulgaria, when residents and activists raised barricades around their village. They believed that a planned gold mining project in the nearby hills would harm the environment and their health. They demanded it to be cancelled. The villagers’ impulsive action has put the project on hold for the last three years. But this, or any other community, might not have been as successful in attaining a concrete outcome, had it chosen to fight for access to high speed internet. And the reason is simple. Unlike the environment, internet is not widely perceived by authorities, legislators and policy makers as an essential common good.

Taking control of technology for women’s advocacy took a different tack in the Czech Republic, where APC WNSP Europe introduced the project “Women into IT” to challenge stereotypes around women and ICTs and attract more women into the IT field.

Stencil for German campaign against the EU Directive on data retention. Licence: CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0A European Union directive on data retention is set to be implemented in all member states from 2009, requiring all telecom providers to hold on to your email’s destination, the subject line and the sending time. European internet service providers are requested to retain not only email, but any metadata of communication originating from their network. But isn’t that a violation of the fundamental right to privacy, as defined by our 60-year old Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Isn’t it in direct defiance of APC’s Internet Rights Charter? Groups associated with the APC community, academics and radical technology collectives converge onto Budapest in September to seek a way out of Fortress Europe 2.0.

In late 2007 ZaMirNET organised a national workshop with representatives of government agencies, academia and the business sector to exchange information about current e-government initiatives, as part of the Inclusive e-Government Network project. The Croatian government has been investing significant resources in the development of various e-services, and ZaMirNET wanted to point out the lack of compliance with recognised standards of web accessibility, which is prejudicing people with visual impairments.

Cine Kinè During 2007, Kinè ran a “Show!