Business and Human Rights
Update: The initial disclosure by Greenwald and the Guardian has since been followed by reports from, first from the Washington Post and followed by the New York Times, Guardian, and Wall Street Journal confirming and dramatically enlarging the scope of…
6 June 2013
Jeff Landale contributed to this post. A newly released UN report warns that human rights standards have fallen behind rapid advances in surveillance technology, arguing that states have an obligation to “revise national laws regulating [surveillance] in line with human…
6 June 2013
A week after Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes requested that the European Parliament help save European citizens’ “right to access the open internet by guaranteeing net neutrality” in a speech on May 30 in Brussels, Kroes avoided language that would have directly supporting net neutrality while speaking at a panel event organized by Access at the European Parliament.…
6 June 2013
As Istanbul’s Taksim Square swelled with protesters on Friday night, local authorities seemingly disabled livestreams from the municipality’s ‘Turistik Kameralar,’ or Tourist Cameras, that showed views of the plaza. By scraping the feed, Access was able to identify when the camera was disabled, as well as evidence that seems to prove that the feeds were disabled deliberately, rather than collapsing under ‘viewer load.’…
1 June 2013
Today, civil liberties groups from across Latin America sent a letter to the European Parliament, urging the lead Committee working on the Data Protection Regulation to protect the privacy of citzens in the EU and around the world.…
28 May 2013
The UN World Telecommunication Policy Forum (WTPF) concluded yesterday in Geneva, with the adoption of six opinions to guide international policy on broadband and internet exchange point (IXP) deployment, as well as internet governance. That was exactly the plan–but what happened over the course of the three day meeting is revealing for the future of internet governance reform. …
17 May 2013
Yesterday, the US House of Representatives voted unanimously to pass a bill on internet governance that was superfluous, misguided, and potentially harmful to ongoing international negotiations on internet governance.…
16 May 2013
Last month, a Chilean criminal court dismissed all charges against Rodrigo Ferrari, who was charged in February with the criminal offense of “identity usurpation,” for allegedly authoring the twitter accounts @losluksic, @luksicandronico, and @andronicoluksic, Twitter accounts that parodied the activities of the Luksic family, among the wealthiest families in Chile.…
15 May 2013
The US Senate finally voted to confirm David Medine as the first Chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), a government oversight body charged with protecting privacy and civil liberties in the United States.…
13 May 2013
Tomorrow the World Telecommunication Policy Forum (WTPF), a meeting hosted by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU), will kick off in Geneva. The meeting, meant to provide a venue for governments and industry to discuss key policy issues in today’s telecommunications and information and communication technology (ICT) environment, has declared its theme for 2013 to be internet-related public policy. For the next three days, the Member States of the ITU, i.e. governments, are expected to discuss and adopt opinions that will guide international internet policy making. But if recent history is a guide, chances are it won’t be so simple.…
13 May 2013