The free expression and privacy rights of Romanians are threatened by recent invasive data retention laws. Sign the petition and help demand an end to invasive surveillance legislation!

Just one month after the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rejected the Data Retention Directive – a legal act that would give security agencies access to private information related to citizens’ telecommunications and internet use – Romania has continued to strengthen a legal culture of mass surveillance by:

– ignoring the ECJ decision and keeping the law 82/2012, allowing widespread data retention to be enforced anyway

– adopting, without public consultation, a law requiring registration of all prepaid SIM card users (including forcing the current 12 million users to submit their personal data during the next 6 months or face disconnection). This is all the more egregious given that this is the 4th such attempt since 2011.

– promoting a new legislative text that will require providers of free public WiFi hotspots to identify their users.

– adopting, without public consultation, a new law on information security that would require all citizens and companies that possess any kind of computer system to implement information security policies and to allow representatives of nine institutions (intelligence, law enforcement and defence agencies, ministries and other public institutions) to “have access to the data being held.”

The following signatories demand that Romanian government and their public institutions to abandon this invasive legislation, and respect the privacy rights of citizens.