Advancing digital rights in Europe
What we do
DFF funds three types of activities: litigation, pre-litigation, and post-litigation. We accept grant applications through regular calls for applications, which are announced on our grants page.
DFF facilitates events and develops resources to support organisations and individuals in pursuing litigation to advance digital rights.
Our Grantmaking Case Studies
Defend Digital Me undertook both a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office and a judicial review of the UK Department for Education, aiming to stop its attendance tracker trial programme....
Háttér Society are preparing for litigation challenging the blocking of access to online LGBTQI+ content in Hungary. This relates to the adoption in 2021 of legislation that bans access of...
front-LEX is requesting the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to outlaw the European Border and Coast Guard Agency’s (Frontex’s) policy of systematically sharing the geolocation data of...
CIJ is preparing for litigation enforcing the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) to address gender-based censorship by Meta platforms and other Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs). CIJ found that Meta...
Partners Serbia are challenging the illegal acquisition of automatic facial recognition equipment by education and health institutions in Serbia. The litigation will start with motions for the initiation of an...
Association Stronger Together Skopje believe that the North Macedonia Ministry of Health’s data system, MojTermin leads to medical data of patients being processed and accessed by all medical professionals, without...
In January 2019, the EU’s European Commission granted adequacy to Japan for its data protection laws, allowing personal data to flow freely between the EU and Japan. The adequacy decision...
In Serbia, the Law on Social Card was adopted in 2021, establishing an electronic register containing the data of beneficiaries of social protection schemes, and enabling automated processing of data...
Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) and I Have Rights, a refugee law clinic based in Samos, Greece, are preparing for litigation challenging the technology and surveillance infrastructure of the Samos...
The Greek law on retention of electronic communications metadata (Law 3917/2011) was not revised following a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidating the EU...
Our Current Community Strengthening & Support Projects
DFF develops resources, organises convenings, meetings and workshops that help to improve the strategic litigation skills of the community of organisations and individuals working on digital rights in Europe.
Our aim is to increase awareness of the potential of the EU Charter of fundamental rights in the defence and protection of digital rights, to conduct capacity building, and to strengthen the knowledge and ability of different stakeholders in enforcing digital rights using strategic litigation.
Resources
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News
From our blog
Transforming our grantmaking through participatory decision-making
DFF is undertaking a pilot of participatory decision-making for our grantmaking. We are seeking expressions of interest from people who would like to be part of the “peer group” (Peer Group) that will review grant applications in this pilot and
Law Enforcement and Facial Recognition Technologies in Italy – An Activist’s Update
StraLi is an NGO created in Italy in 2018 that focuses on strategic litigation. In June 2022, StraLi’s work was supported with a pre-litigation research grant funded by the DFF. The purpose of the research was to prepare a litigation strategy
An inside look into DFF’s past and future events on collective redress
As technologies such as mass data collection, profiling, and AI-driven decision-making continue to spread, tech-driven harms are increasingly taking on a collective dimension and disproportionately impacting marginalised communities. To effectively confront the extensive and large-scale digital rights violations which stem
Upcoming events
This event is a follow-up to our previous Collective Action for Platform Accountability Workshop held in Berlin in September. It will feature expert-led and peer-driven discussions on key topics related to collective redress, in particular quantification of damages and tech evidence gathering. The discussions will focus on strategising ways to hold Big Tech platforms accountable for the collective harms they enable and exacerbate, as well as identifying opportunities for cross-disciplinary and cross-jurisdictional collaborations among CSOs and practitioners.