Tag: Business & Human Rights

Brett Solomon, executive director of Access, explores strategies for working within corporate accountability structures to defend human rights in the digital age.

At the BT (formerly British Telecom) annual general meeting in London, Access directs the following question to company’s CEO, as well as to its board: What specific next steps will BT take this year (that is, in the next 12 months) to better protect customers’ privacy and free expression rights, and to achieve greater transparency around its actions, in every country where you operate?

On Wednesday the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). This resolution clarifies the Parliament’s position on the proposed EU.-US trade deal, providing guidance to the European Commission on how to continue the negotiations.

Access joined a coalition of groups in calling for the government of Iraq to restore full access to the internet after the government ordered a series of shutdowns, allegedly in connection with school examinations.

This week we learned even more about the way these firms operate when a hacker copied and leaked some 400 gigabytes of data from Hacking Team, the Italy-based surveillance tech firm. Here are five Tweets that reveal the scope of the company’s impact on human rights.

There is now clear evidence that Hacking Team company sells surveillance software to countries including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Ecuador, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates. The sale of surveillance tools to rights-abusing regimes directly impacts users at risk, including journalists, bloggers, sexual rights activists, members of the LGBTIQ community, and human rights defenders. We take a look at how people in these countries can protect themselves, and explore how companies and governments should respond.

Today the European Parliament’s trade committee is expected to decide whether to give the European Commision carte blanche to continue negotiations on a mechanism that would make it easier for foreign corporations to influence legislation in Europe.

Access has published a policy brief for the first meeting of the NetMundial Initiative’s (NMI) Coordination Council, identifying issues at stake in the meeting.

Today, as the European Parliament’s trade committee considers amendments to its position on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Access has published a brief to help people on both sides of the Atlantic understand what’s at stake in the negotiations.

Access is currently in the nascent stages of implementing a three year subgranting project. This project will allow us to more directly support the critical work of civil society actors working on digital rights.