Tag: Business & Human Rights

The process for sharing criminal investigation information between countries is broken: official exchanges between nations are slow, underfunded, and lacking in user protections. Human rights are at risk.

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (Hivos) released the 2014 Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) report covering the state of digital surveillance around the globe. Access wrote the GISWatch country report for the U.S., The Necessary and Proportionate Principles and the US government.

This briefing note, prepared by APC and Access, highlights the key internet rights-related issues in the Human Rights Council’s agenda for the 27th session, as well as countries scrutinized in the Universal Periodic Review.

Access, joined by members of Congress, former government officials, and dozens of civil society groups and private companies, has urged the Obama Administration to reform surveillance practices under Executive Order 12333, which authorizes mass surveillance by NSA and other intelligence agencies with no meaningful limits.

This has already been a historic year in internet governance, from the NetMundial to the first steps of the IANA transition to the announcement of the modalities for the WSIS+10 Review and the ITU Plenipotentiary ahead. As governments, corporations, civil society, and the technical community assess this changing landscape, we should now add the NetMundial Initiative (NMI), which will hold its first meeting in Geneva this week.

The company disclosed surveillance requests from its two home jurisdictions, along with promises of more comprehensive reports to be released every six months.

This week, Azerbaijan is hosting experts from the UN to examine the impact of business activities on human rights in the country.

For the past four months, the European Commission has been conducting a public consultation on corporate social responsibility (CSR) to which Access responded. Unfortunately, we found little to praise in the Commission’s efforts on CSR thus far, and have many qualms with the limited consultation process.