Witnesses expressed concern over the impact of the legal system on the work of journalists: problems with access to information laws, the absence of adequate whistleblower legislation, the absence of appropriate policies to protect journalists from police searches, and Section 4 of the Security of Information Act, which makes it a crime for a journalist to possess a government secret.

As regards financial services, lack of information in advertising on the annual rate and the cost of credit, offers of misleading bargains for credit contracts with a low interest rate, and lack of proper information on the legal obligations related to the signing of contracts were amongst the practices reported.[113] In relation to immovable property, examples of practices encountered were: misdescription of property characteristics, lack of transparency in relation to the cost of the property and respective taxes, bait advertising, aggressive practices by real estate agents such as intimidating consumers into signing an exclusive contr ...[+++]act with an agent when attempting to sell their properties.

(28) The obligation to erase traffic data or to make such data anonymous when it is no longer needed for the purpose of the transmission of a communication does not conflict with such procedures on the Internet as the caching in the domain name system of IP addresses or the caching of IP addresses to physical address bindings or the use of log-in information to control the right of access to networks or services.

Online service providers who act as mere conduit, caching or hosting services providers are not responsible for the information they transmit or host if they fulfil certain conditions.

These include problems in the transposition of directives and the application of secondary legislation, and the lack of: - information on basic consumer rights and how to assert them; - general recognition of the direct horizontal effect of directives on consumer matters; - a genuine single market in insurance and financial services in general; - tangible results in the areas of general consumer safety, safety of services and defective product liability.

In other cases, where our rules require the recognition of a senator's absence, such as rule 11 under which the clerk must inform the Senate of the Speaker's unavoidable absence before the Speaker pro tempore takes the chair at the beginning of a sitting, reference to this absence is entirely appropriate, indeed required.