Nearly 130 Public Interest Organizations and Experts Urge the United Nations to Include Human Rights Safeguards in Proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty
(UPDATE: Due to the ongoing situation concerning the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the Ad Hoc Committee won't hold its first session from 17 to 28 January 2022 in New York, as planned. Further information will be provided in due course).EFF and Human Rights Watch, along with nearly 130 organizations and academics...
FPF’s 2020 Student Privacy Pledge: New Pledge, Similar Problems
EFF legal intern Rob Ferrari was the lead author of this post.A new school year has started, the second one since the pandemic began. With our education system becoming increasingly reliant on the use of technology (“edtech”), especially for remote learning during the pandemic, protecting student privacy is...
The Cryptocurrency Surveillance Provision Buried in the Infrastructure Bill is a Disaster for Digital Privacy
The forthcoming Senate draft of Biden's infrastructure bill—a 2,000+ page bill designed to update the United States’ roads, highways, and digital infrastructure—contains a poorly crafted provision that could create new surveillance requirements for many within the blockchain ecosystem. This could include developers and others who do not control digital...
Why Indian Courts Should Reject Traceability Obligations
Strong end-to-end encryption is under attack in India. The Indian government’s new and dangerous online intermediary rules forcing messaging applications to track—and be able to identify—the originator of any message is fundamentally incompatible with the privacy and security protections of strong encryption. Companies were obliged to comply with the...
Your Avatar is You, However You See Yourself, and You Should Control Your Experience and Your Data
Virtual worlds are increasingly providing sophisticated, realistic, and often immersive experiences that are the stuff of fantasy. You can enter them by generating an avatar - a representation of the user that could take the form of an animal, a superhero, a historic figure, each some version of yourself or...
European Court on Human Rights Bought Spy Agencies’ Spin on Mass Surveillance
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Grand Chamber this week affirmed what we’ve long known, that the United Kingdom’s mass surveillance regime, which involved the indiscriminate and suspicionless interception of people’s communications, violated basic human rights to privacy and free expression. We applaud the Strasbourg-based ...
Japan’s Rikunabi Scandal Shows The Dangers of Privacy Law Loopholes
Special thanks to former legal intern Hinako Sugiyama, who was a lead co-author of this post.Technology users around the world are increasingly concerned, and rightly so, about protecting their data. But many are unaware of exactly how their data is being collected and would be shocked to learn of...
Despite Progress, Metadata Still Under "Second Class" Protection in Latam Legal Safeguards
InternetLab’s Report Sets Direction for Telecom Privacy in Brazil
Five years have passed since InternetLab published “Quem Defende Seus Dados?" (“Who defends your data?"), a report that holds ISPs accountable for their privacy and data protection policies in Brazil. Since then, major Brazilian telecom companies have provided more transparency about their data protection and privacy policies,...
IPANDETEC’s Report on Panama’s ISPs Show Improvements But More Work Needed to Protect Users’ Privacy
IPANDETEC, the leading digital rights organization in Panama, today released its second annual Who Defends Your Data" (¿Quién Defiende Tus Datos?) report assessing how well the country’s mobile phone and Internet service providers (ISPs) are protecting users' communications data. While most companies received low scores, the report shows...
