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There is now clear evidence that Hacking Team company sells surveillance software to countries including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Ecuador, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates. The sale of surveillance tools to rights-abusing regimes directly impacts users at risk, including journalists, bloggers, sexual rights activists, members of the LGBTIQ community, and human rights defenders. We take a look at how people in these countries can protect themselves, and explore how companies and governments should respond.

Today Access is participating in informal interactive consultations on the World Summit on the Information Society “WSIS+10” review. The consultations are taking place during the UN General Assembly, and are organized by the President of the 69th session of the assembly. We assert that for the full promise of the internet to flower, we must keep human rights central to the WSIS process and ensure that states adhere to their human rights commitments, specifically by ending unlawful surveillance and protecting the right to privacy; stopping censorship and internet shutdowns; ensuring our rights are not undermined in the name of cyber security; and protecting Net Neutrality and preventing the discrimination of data, content, or platforms.

Today at the 29th session of the UN’s Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva, Access joined a group of more than 25 civil society organizations in a joint statement that calls on all governments to promote the use of strong encryption technologies, and to protect the right to seek, receive, and impart information anonymously online.

The Delfi AS v. Estonia case, which has profound implications for freedom of expression online, today reached its conclusion with a ruling by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. Unfortunately, this long-awaited decision was not the right one. The Grand Chamber, the highest human rights court in Europe, ruled in favor of Estonia, embracing the idea that websites should be held liable for certain types of anonymous comments posted by users.

On Tuesday, the Canadian Senate voted in favor of the controversial Bill C-51 with a count of 44-28. The bill, which hundreds of thousands of Canadians have spoken out against, can criminalize political discussion even when it’s conducted in private. It centralizes data kept on citizens, empowers intelligence services to make arrests, and even allows intelligence to conduct disruptive operations such as altering a seized website or conducting a man-in-the-middle attack.

This month, 24 women’s national teams will travel to Canada to compete for the ultimate prize in soccer: the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Yet as the world celebrates, the government of Canada is poised to pass dangerous new surveillance legislation.

In an important victory for privacy, President Barack Obama signed the USA FREEDOM Act into law.

This year’s RightsCon, held in Manila, was a sold-out event bringing together 660 attendees from 56 different countries to explore real-world strategies for keeping the internet open and free. It was an extraordinarily productive conference. To participate, the leader of each session was asked a simple question: How would your engagement create real-world change? The newly released RightsCon Southeast Asia Outcomes Report shows how the participants — representing civil society, the private sector, government, tech, and academia — answered that question.

Today the French National Assembly approved a dangerous new proposal which would allow intelligence services to violate user privacy and harm freedom of expression. The so-called “French Patriot Act” was first introduced shortly after the killings at the newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January of this year. Sadly, the government used the killings as a pretext to push forward legislation that will give the intelligence services the ability to monitor communications with almost no judicial oversight.

Today, Access submitted a letter to UN and African Union experts requesting their urgent intervention on the internet shutdown in Burundi, where social media services have been cut off in the face of public unrest. The letter underscores the importance of the internet to realizing human rights, and explains how shutdowns often enable egregious human rights violations.