Privacy
On Tuesday, Access and more than 80 organizations and internet companies sent a letter to Congress demanding an immediate halt to and investigation of the U.S. National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. Other signatories include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, and reddit.
…11 June 2013
A broad civil society coalition of more than 90 civil society organizations and individuals issued a joint statement at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) today calling for the protection of human rights in the digital age in the wake of the recently revealed PRISM and US National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program. The statement, which was delivered at the 23rd session of the HRC, by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Reporters without Borders, in particular highlighted the need to protect the rights of whistleblowers and to prevent the establishment of a global internet surveillance system.
…10 June 2013
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
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
Yesterday the US government announced a new round of sanctions relief for Iranian citizens, providing users with easier access to the internet and a wide range of personal communications technologies. With the road to export without the need for specific licenses explicitly cleared, now is the time for these companies to make their products and services available to Iranian users. …
31 May 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
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
A month after the publication of its first Transparency Report mentioning National Security Letters (NSLs), Google filed a motion before the Northern District of California to “set aside”–or in plain language, defer–this controversial form of request. Google’s action follows in the courageous legal footsteps of a handful of service providers–including the ACLU’s defense of the Calyx Institute and EFF’s successful petition on behalf of an unnamed client–raising hopes that Google’s suit may finally expose the worldwide reach of NSLs.
…8 May 2013
Last week, we documented network interference in Malaysia: local internet service providers (ISPs) were obstructing the free flow of traffic from selected sites hosting opposition political content, right ahead of a critical election. We asked the Access community to demand accountability from the Malaysian government, and ensure the Malaysian internet stayed free and open. Thousands of members from more than 60 countries signed a petition telling the MCMC to keep Malaysia online–and we delivered that petition. On Sunday, May 5th, in the midst of the elections, we wrote to Sharil Tarmizi, head of the MCMC, to remind them that the world was watching: network interference is an unacceptable violation of Malaysians’ rights. …
6 May 2013
May 3 is World Press Freedom Day, a day to celebrate the fundamental principles of independent media. But WPFD is also an opportunity to pay attention to where press freedom is under attack around the world–and the increasing tendency of those attacks to occur online. Bloggers and citizen journalists are arrested, jailed, and murdered for the words they write and the images they share; citizens are cut off from each other and from the information they seek because of what governments or companies deem appropriate for society.…
3 May 2013
On Sunday, May 5th, Malaysia will go to the polls for a highly contested general election, potentially ending 56 years of single-party rule. But ever since the elections were announced in April, the internet has become become a target: opposition websites and independent media have experienced significant network interference–and with the election days away, pressure is intensifying.…
2 May 2013
Today a coalition of civil rights groups warned that citizens could be stripped of their right to privacy by dangerous EU Parliament proposals. The coalition — including Access, EDRi, Privacy International, Bits of Freedom, Panoptykon, La Quadrature du Net, Open Rights Group and Digitale Gesellschaft — released a report detailing the most dangerous amendments to the Data Protection Regulation and a website, nakedcitizens.eu where citizens can take direct action to contact Members of the European Parliament to demand that they protect their fundamental rights.…
25 April 2013
The House of Representatives passed the privacy-invading Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a vote of 288 – 127. The bill must still pass the Senate, and overcome a veto threat from Obama, before it becomes law.…
18 April 2013
The proposed U.S. House of Representatives “Internet Governance Bill” was approved by the full Energy and Commerce Committee today and will now move on to the full House of Representatives. The revised draft of the bill would make it the “policy of the United States to preserve and advance the successful multistakeholder model that governs the Internet.”…
17 April 2013
The proposed U.S. House of Representatives “Internet Governance Bill” has moved on to the full Energy and Commerce Committee after two days of markup and debate in the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. If passed into law, the bill would make it the “policy of the United States to promote a global Internet free from government control and to preserve and advance the successful multistakeholder model that governs the Internet.”
…12 April 2013