Tag: Business & Human Rights

62,000 Users Rally to Challenge Mobile Tracking by Verizon and other major carriers.

Following years of controversy, the Safe Harbor will now have to face the Court of Justice of the European Union. Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems filed a case in Irish court against Facebook was referred to the Court of Justice to examine the legality of the agreement with E.U. law.

The U.S. government believes that those who are not in the U.S. or who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents — “non-U.S. persons” in official parlance — have few to no privacy rights to protect them from U.S. surveillance. Access provides four policy recommendations that would start the U.S. on a course towards respecting the human rights of all people.

In September 2014, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) released a working paper on best practices for stakeholder engagement in human rights due diligence. This paper, focusing on challenges faced by ICT companies when trying to engage with rights holders, was jointly produced with the Center for Democracy and Technology and commissioned by Microsoft’s Technology and Human Rights Center.

Access Senior Policy Counsel Amie Stepanovich testifies on behalf of Access/EFF urging the rejection of a proposed rule which would substantively expand the instances in which a government could search or seize control of an individual’s computer in the search for Botnets.

International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Plenipotentiary conference is held once every four years, and we expected this year’s conference in Busan, Korea to be full of controversy. The Conference is now about halfway over and our expectations came true. Here’s a quick halftime report on the major happenings and topics of conversation.

The sweeping new powers contained in Australia’s terror laws have the potential to violate privacy and expression rights of Australians and non-Australians and to “strike at the heart of press freedom.” The terror laws create a mutually reinforcing surveillance scheme, greatly restricting the spaces in which people are free to think and to act on and offline.

Access has written up an overview of the top procedural and substantive concerns to look out for at ITU Plenipotentiary as well as recommendations for relevant and productive areas for the ITU to focus its work on in the coming four years.

U.S. intelligence community misses on questions of human rights