Tag: Regulation

Access and 20 civil society organizations have published an open letter to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), pushing the UN body to ensure meaningful and sustainable civil society participation at the upcoming World Telecommunication Policy Forum (WTPF).

CISPA, the ill-conceived piece of US legislation on information sharing and cybersecurity, is back. Yesterday, the Intelligence Committee of the US House of Representatives held a hearing on cybersecurity, under the banner of “Advanced Threats Facing Our Nation.” The committee, chaired by Republican congressman Mike Rogers, heard testimony from representatives of the financial, energy, corporate, and security industries. No representative of the civil liberties or privacy community was invited to testify.

The order sets out provisions for sharing critical threat information from government to the private sector, but potentially establishes a foundation for later bidirectional sharing of sensitive information. Its vague categorization of what constitutes critical infrastructure limits transparency on threat reduction, and may hinder confidence building measures intended to mitigate cyber conflict. It offers some civil liberties protections, but doesn’t go far enough.

Roundup of the final meeting of the Information Experts Group for the World Telecommunications Policy Group, an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) forum for discussing key policy issues in today’s telecommunications and information and communication technology (ICT) environment.

The Russian government has blocked access to a blog-hosting site that publishes reports from at least two prominent independent journalists often critical of the Kremlin. The site has been added to the country’s recently established official “internet blacklist.”

On January 22nd 2013, the long-running campaign against the draft Iraqi Cyber Crimes law finally bore fruit: the Iraqi Speaker of the House approved a request to the Parliamentary Committee for Media and Culture to permanently revoke the proposed legislation.

In the rapidly-changing mobile landscape in the U.S., users often lack information about the new technology running their apps, games, devices, and accompanying privacy policies. On Friday, the Federal Trade Commission stepped in with guidelines to the mobile marketplace to better protect the privacy of mobile users.

Government requests for the digital information of citizens around the world are growing exponentially. Google and Twitter revealed that a rising number of countries are using this mechanism to conduct investigations. Requests to Twitter jumped by 20% in the second quarter of 2012. Google also observed a jump of more than 70% of requests since 2009, totaling 21,389 requests for information about 33,634 users in the last six months of 2012.

Access has released a briefing document that provides analysis of the outcomes of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), an overview of its geopolitical context, and a preview of upcoming internet governance debates at the United Nations.