Region: North America

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.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a new funding bill yesterday that could undermine the development of internet security and privacy standards while increasing funding for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which has advocated for weakening encryption. It next goes to the Senate.

On Wednesday, President Obama signed into law the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015, which bans bulk collection under some U.S. surveillance powers, increases transparency, and improves accountability of surveillance agencies and oversight mechanisms. The law is far from perfect, but its passage is the first step in a long journey toward comprehensive surveillance reform that protects the human rights of all people around the world.

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

Access congratulates the United States Senate for approving the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015.

Today, Access called on the Obama Administration to craft cybersecurity policies that better protect users’ security and privacy. We call for a “user-up” approach to cybersecurity that recognizes that security and privacy are intertwined. The entire security ecosystem benefits from policies that protect people as well as hardware and software.