Tag: Business & Human Rights

On September 12th, the infamous cybercrime law project known as “Ley Beingolea” appeared at the top of the National Congress of Peru’s list of projects to debate, despite many criticisms and requests from civil society for open dialogue. What followed next was even more incredible: after some debate on the floor, at 11 a.m. all Congress members went into recess. Five hours later, a completely new text entered into discussion and was passed by the Congress, without any public review.

Among the many revelations to come out of this summer, The New York Times recently announced that the NSA has been conducting a systematic and well-funded effort to install “backdoors” in consumer electronic devices, known as “Project Bullrun.” To better understand their history, how they can work, and the risks associated, here are three things you ought to know about backdoors.

The 24th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) opened last Monday, and already in the first week, internet-related human rights issues were highlighted as areas of concern by governments, civil society, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, alike. With the international community still reeling from the revelations of mass state surveillance sparked by Edward Snowden’s leaks in May, much, but not all, discussion of internet issues focused on how to protect human rights, in particular privacy, in the digital age.

On September 5th, the LIBE Committee held the first of a series of hearings as part of the inquiry on “Electronic Mass Surveillance of EU Citizen”s established on July 10 by the Libe Committee. The purpose of this inquiry is to investigate into the NSA and other surveillance programmes, and examine whether those programmes are compatible with EU law.

While European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes was expected to publish the official proposal for a Regulation of the Telecom Single Market today, the announcement has been pushed back to allow for changes following significant concerns raised by other Commissioners on this hotly-debated legislation.

Coming on the heels of an announcement yesterday that the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence will start releasing a transparency report of national security-related requests for user data, the US government disappointingly will be filing a motion to block Google and Microsoft from voluntarily disclosing similar statistics in the company’s own transparency reports.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has joined the chorus of international leaders reaffirming the need to protect human rights in the face of mass surveillance.

Today, Facebook released its first Global Government Requests Report detailing the number of requests for user data the company receives from governments around the world.