Tag: Telcos

Access responds to the Myanmar government’s call for comment on its Draft Telecommunications Masterplan, a document that lays out a plan for the country’s telecommunications regime.

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?

Last week, Verizon Wireless announced that it would allow its users to opt-out of its zombie cookie tracking program, which it calls Relevant Mobile Advertising. Users can now log in to their account and click through a few links to force the company to stop tracking their web traffic. This is a major victory for privacy and follows an earlier pledge by AT&T in November to stop the tracking.

Today the U.S. Federal Communications Commission released its rules to implement its landmark Open Internet Order.

This week the U.S. government issued a General License to provide users with easier access to the internet and a wide range of software, hardware, and services “incident to personal communications” in Sudan. Access applauds the move, which follows years of advocacy by our organization alongside civil society partners in the U.S. and Sudan.

Today, Access delivered a petition signed by 3,000 users to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate the use of so-called “zombie cookies” by mobile carriers to track their customers’ web traffic. Access also delivered a similar petition to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) because both agencies arguably have the authority to investigate these harmful practices.

Access has submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court about the SMS shutdown in the Central African Republic during June and July 2014. The submission supports the latest ICC investigation into crimes against humanity in CAR, the Court’s second probe into the “endless” list of atrocities perpetrated there.

Access has been fighting the use of supercookies since last fall, when we learned that the mobile carrier Verizon Wireless had been secretly injecting Unique Identifier Headers, or UIDH, into every single http request made by its mobile users. Recently, we learned even more disturbing news about mobile tracking on Verizon and other cell phone carriers over the past few weeks. Even without this type of third-party abuse, though, the very existence of these cookies violates our privacy rights if we can’t truly opt out.

This week, the Democratic Republic of the Congo ordered a full shutdown of internet and SMS traffic in response to protests against the government. The shutdown is just the latest example of telcos complying with government censorship orders, albeit reluctantly.