Privacy
Last week, a review marking ten years since the UN World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) kicked off in Paris at UNESCO. WSIS was a pair of UN-sponsored conferences held in 2003 in Geneva and 2005 in Tunis, aimed at bridging the digital divide and generally advancing the global discussion about the internet and ICTs. …
4 March 2013
After two weeks of voting, the “winner” of our Telco Hall of Shame is AT&T, who was nominated for being BFF’s with the NSA. The US-based telecommunications company won with nearly a quarter of the the vote, followed by another American telco, Verizon, with 17%.
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28 February 2013
The Industry, Research, and Energy (ITRE) Committee of the European Parliament recently voted through its Opinion on the Data Protection Regulation, sending a clear message to European citizens that a majority of the Committee believes the interests of large corporations should trump the protection of their fundamental right to privacy.…
27 February 2013
As the European Parliament debates new data protection reforms,US technology companies have arrived in Brussels to commence an unprecedented lobbying effort aimed at preventing strong regulation and weakening existing standards. Most troublingly, some of the draft legislative proposals have been copied and pasted directly from lobbying documents, evidence of the immense influence of US giants like Google and Amazon on European policy.…
26 February 2013
CISPA, the ill-conceived piece of US legislation on information sharing and cybersecurity, is back. Yesterday, the Intelligence Committee of the US House of Representatives held a hearing on cybersecurity, under the banner of “Advanced Threats Facing Our Nation.” The committee, chaired by Republican congressman Mike Rogers, heard testimony from representatives of the financial, energy, corporate, and security industries. No representative of the civil liberties or privacy community was invited to testify.…
15 February 2013
The order sets out provisions for sharing critical threat information from government to the private sector, but potentially establishes a foundation for later bidirectional sharing of sensitive information. Its vague categorization of what constitutes critical infrastructure limits transparency on threat reduction, and may hinder confidence building measures intended to mitigate cyber conflict. It offers some civil liberties protections, but doesn’t go far enough.…
13 February 2013
The Russian government has blocked access to a blog-hosting site that publishes reports from at least two prominent independent journalists often critical of the Kremlin. The site has been added to the country’s recently established official “internet blacklist.”…
8 February 2013
Inductee: Huawei Headquarters: China CEO: Ren Zhengfei Deputy Board Director: Ken Hu Huawei Board of Directors. CORPORATE INFO Network Size: Not Publicly Available Countries of Operation: More than 150 countries Finances: 11.6 billion CNY in net profits for 2011. HUMAN…
8 February 2013
Inductee: ZTE Corp Headquarters: China Board Chairman Hou Weigui and the ZTE Board CORPORATE INFO Countries of Operation: Australia, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Argentina, Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Belarus, Bolivia, Brasil Brasilia, Brasil Sao Paulo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Czech, Cyprus, Canada,…
8 February 2013
On January 22nd 2013, the long-running campaign against the draft Iraqi Cyber Crimes law finally bore fruit: the Iraqi Speaker of the House approved a request to the Parliamentary Committee for Media and Culture to permanently revoke the proposed legislation.…
8 February 2013
Inductee: TeliaSonera AB Headquarters: Sweden Acting CEO: Per-Arne Blomquist Board Chairman: Anders Narvinger TeliaSonera Board of Directors CORPORATE INFO Network Size: 170 million subscribers. Countries of Operation: Azerbaijan, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Nepal, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Tajikistan,…
7 February 2013