Tag: Telcos

News broke last week that the US government is surveilling the location and movements of international cell phones, collecting 5 billion daily records of cellphone location data. An official confirmed the bulk collection of data through fiber optic cables in the US, saying intelligence agencies do not intentionally target cellphones in the United States.

Net neutrality gets at the heart of many of the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose 65th anniversary we celebrate today. While freedom of expression and access to information are often mentioned in the same breath as net neutrality, net neutrality also has an important privacy component. Recently proposed legislation in the EU offers the opportunity to enshrine net neutrality into law, potentially adding important protections for user communications.

On the 65th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the celebration of UN Human Rights day, we would like to take this opportunity to reflect upon the importance of privacy and data protection as key pillars of healthy societies.

Swedish telco TeliaSonera is taking further steps to remedy its involvement in corrupt business deals in Uzbekistan, most recently by Monday’s ousting of four senior executives.

Today the U.N. General Assembly took a critical first step in addressing mass surveillance as a human rights violations with the passage of a resolution recognizing the right to privacy in the digital age.

Ecuador is set to finish a major revision to its Criminal Code on Friday, and it’s not looking good for user rights. Even as the country’s president, Rafael Correa, has been outspoken in criticizing NSA surveillance, the Ecuadorean Assembly is charging ahead with a requirement that all internet service providers spy on their customers, in violation of the country’s Constitution and international law.

Investors taking note that government spying “threatens the foundation” of many technology companies’ business models.

Since last year, Access has been working to raise the profile of net neutrality and stop network discrimination in Europe. As result of this work, today Access has launched its policy paper on “Net neutrality: Ending Network Discrimination in Europe”.

All internet services in Sudan were abruptly shut down today while protests swelled in the capital Khartoum for the third day after fuel subsidies were cut, doubling the price of gas.

Last Thursday, after two years of delay, the European Commission published a proposal for the Regulation of the Telecom Single Market that promises Net Neutrality but delivers just the opposite.