Tag: International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance
Blog
Lurkers prohibited: Human rights apply to social media monitoring
Politicians and law enforcement in the U.S., E.U, and elsewhere are calling for more authority to monitor user-generated social media content, a practice that is inherently intrusive and ripe for abuse. We provide recommendations for limiting such programs.…
13 January 2016
Blog
Access Now, coalition to U.S. agencies: Act now on human rights
Your rights are violated by mass surveillance conducted by the United States and other governments. But changing U.S. mass surveillance practices is hard — especially if you’re not a U.S. citizen. It’s hard even to challenge these abuses because most…
5 November 2015
Blog
The U.N. wants to connect everyone to the internet. That’s not enough.
In a new op-ed published at Slate, David Kaye, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the freedom of expression, and Brett Solomon, our executive director, argue that in global policy, connecting the developing world to the internet isn’t enough. Respect for human rights must go “hand in glove” with the drive to connection.
…14 October 2015
Blog
Announcing the 2015 Heroes & Villains of Human Rights and Communications Surveillance
Today Access recognizes the individuals and groups that have either been champions of the 13 internationally recognized principles for human rights in communications surveillance (“Heroes”), or have undermined or violated those principles (“Villains”). These principles, called the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance (or “the Principles”), have been endorsed by more than 400 civil society groups worldwide. They provide a framework for assessing whether government surveillance practices comply with international human rights obligations. Today marks the two-year anniversary of the Principles, which were publicly released on September 22, 2013.
…22 September 2015
Blog
Away from exceptionalism: The need for global surveillance reform
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
Blog
Virtual Integrity: Three steps toward building stronger cryptographic standards
As the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance make clear, the preservation of the integrity of communications and systems is a key obligation under international law. Just as it would be unreasonable for governments to insist that all residents of houses should leave their doors unlocked just in case the police need to search a particular property, or to require all persons to install surveillance cameras in their houses on the basis that it might be useful to future prosecutions, it is equally disproportionate for governments to interfere with the integrity of everyone’s communications in order to facilitate its investigations or to require the identification of users as a precondition for service provision or the retention of all customer data. …
18 September 2014
Blog
Blanket data retention: Law enforcement wants it, but they don’t need it
On April 8, 2014, Europe’s highest court, the ECJ, released a long-awaited decision on the controversial Data Retention Directive, confirming what we all knew: the blanket surveillance mandated by the Data Retention Directive is neither necessary nor proportionate.…
15 September 2014
Blog
Freshly released GISWatch reports address surveillance
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.…
9 September 2014