15 years of Privacy First

Milestones

We asked our former managing director Vincent Böhre for a Top 10 of milestones achieved since our inception and he came up with the following:

• Road pricing via "spy boxes" in cars on hold since 2009.
• Electronic Patient Record (EHR) unanimously rejected by the Senate in 2011.
• Abolition of fingerprint storage under the Passport Act in 2011, partly due to pressure from our Passport Process.
• Due to a lawsuit by Privacy First, motorists have not been required to enter their license plate number when parking since 2015.
• In 2015, the Telecom retention obligation was abolished in the Netherlands by a lawsuit by Privacy First in coalition with several other organisations.
• Our referendum campaign contributed to the Dutch people voting against the so-called Sleep Act in 2018.
• Thanks in part to quiet diplomacy by Privacy First, the Review Board on Deployment of Powers (TIB) was established in 2018 to rein in secret services.
• Since 2018, Privacy First in cooperation with ECP has presented the Dutch Privacy Awards annually during the National Privacy Conference.
• Due to the coalition case with the Civil Rights Protection Platform against the System Risk Indication (SyRI), SyRI was abolished in 2020 and this judgment has since been considered an international "leading case" on risk profiling of citizens.
• Together with former winners and nominees of our Dutch Privacy Awards, Privacy First established the Privacy Coalition in 2022 to promote privacy-friendly services and products.

None of this could have happened without the support of many volunteers and donors. We thank you very much for your contributions and commitment over the past years.