2014 was a major year for digital rights, with some significant victories and some worrying setbacks. 2015 is poised to be no different. This year, we asked Access staff to spotlight the big digital freedom issues for 2015. And we’ll need your help in the fight for digital freedom around the globe. …
9 January 2015
The High Court of Kenya has temporarily suspended the implementation of eight clauses of the Security Laws (Amendment) Act of 2014, which restricts the exercise of human rights in Kenya. Access applauds the High Court’s decision in suspending these parts of the law law and urges the Court to thoroughly consider the entire law’s human rights impact in its ultimate assessment. …
7 January 2015
Surveillance impacts everyone, especially the most vulnerable and at-risk populations. It is past time that all users demand action, domestically as well as internationally, for the universal respect of human rights.…
11 December 2014
Global conversations on cybersecurity, particularly in the west, have been largely focused on securing critical infrastructure. This nation-state-level focus has, perhaps unsurprisingly, implicated the military in defending a country’s national borders and national infrastructure, with “cyber” now joining air, land, sea, and space as a 5th domain of military warfare. To maintain the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the digital age, nations must now advance a user-focused approach to cybersecurity.…
8 December 2014
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. …
12 November 2014
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. …
7 November 2014