Donna Wentworth

The United States is pulling out of the United Nations Human Rights Council. This abdicates responsibility and will hurt human rights.

On Tuesday, Facebook announced changes to its “authentic name” policy that are designed to help vulnerable users avoid harassment or having their accounts suspended.

Last week, Obama Administration officials revealed that they will not force technology companies to weaken encryption to give government officials special access to users’ data. However, this is only a partial win for advocates of smart digital security policy. As our U.S. policy manager Amie Stepanovich explains in a post at Just Security, ambiguity remains with regard to the administration’s stand on encryption.

In a new op-ed published at Slate, David Kaye, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the freedom of expression, and Brett Solomon, our executive director, argue that in global policy, connecting the developing world to the internet isn’t enough. Respect for human rights must go “hand in glove” with the drive to connection.

During the 2015 general elections in Sudan, several online newspapers were targeted for malicious hacking and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. When one opposition newspaper became unreachable due to a suspected DDoS attack, Dalia Haj-Omar, a Sudanese human rights advocate living in France, enlisted the help of Access’ Digital Security Helpline, through which activists, independent media, and civil society organizations across the globe can get real-time, direct technical assistance and advice 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With our assistance, the opposition paper was accessible again within 48 hours.

Inviting more sites and services to join Internet.org doesn’t fix the program’s Net Neutrality problem. In fact, in many ways it makes Internet.org even more troubling for those of us who care about digital rights.