Tag: Business & Human Rights

Some of the world’s leading sustainable investment firms have joined the growing chorus of voices speaking out against private sector compliance in the U.S. government’s sweeping violations of human rights through its widely publicized NSA surveillance programs.

James Comey, nominee for director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, failed to take a stand against the U.S. government’s widely publicized recent intrusions into personal privacy at his confirmation hearing. However, many of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee signaled their support for important reform.

Hundreds in New York marched to protest the U.S. government’s unlawful surveillance programs and to support privacy rights.

Access recently released a paper by Peter Bourgelais, an Access Tech Fellow, highlighting the growing electronic surveillance in post-Soviet Central Asia and the difficulties of regulating its manufacture and distribution. In Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, Russian-made technologies and companies dominate the market, and techniques that have limited regulatory efficacy elsewhere — such as export controls and public campaigning — are much less effective.

Myanmar has chosen the two winners of its new telecoms licenses, Telenor Mobile Communications of Norway and Ooredoo of Qatar. After winning the highly competitive process, they will have their work cut out for them, both operationally and in with regards to human rights.

After almost four years of discussion, Ecuador’s National Assembly passed a new Communications Law, providing a legal framework for the fundamental right to communications considered in the Constitution of 2008. While this new legislation represents a great advance for internet access, along with a more equitable distribution of public spectrum, it also contains some provisions that represent a threat to freedom of expression.

The Freedom Online Coalition (FOC), a group of 21 governments committed to collaborating to advance internet freedom, convened in Tunis, Tunisia for their third annual meeting of governments, businesses, and civil society. While the conference had several programmatic tracks, recent revelations of sweeping state surveillance took center stage, including civil society’s statement at the closing plenary (below) which pointed to a series of principles that should underlie communications surveillance policies and practices.

To help telcos address these concerns, Access has developed guidance for telcos and other information and communication technology (ICT) firms in our new paper, Forgotten Pillar: The Telco Remedy Plan. The paper will be officially released at a special event open to the public in Washington, DC, on Monday June 24th.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is the government oversight body principally charged with protecting privacy and civil liberties in the United States. However, in the eight years since it was established, the PCLOB has met only infrequently. But with the recent revelations of unconstitutional massive data collection by the NSA, it seems the PCLOB’s long run of applied irrelevance may have finally come to an end – and not a moment too soon.

As secrets about the NSA’s surveillance programs continue to command the world’s attention, some communications companies involved are advocating that the US government allow them to reveal more about their participation in the programs in order to maintain their reputations.