Security and privacy
The tools and tactics of these operators, who are mostly non-African, are increasingly undermining democracy and respect for human rights in Africa, as they enable mass surveillance and disinformation that manipulates and undermines political discourse.
GreenNet, the ethical internet service provider that has been connecting people and groups since 1986, suffered a DDoS attack on 22 and 23 November 2019. Forensic examinations revealed that the attack was targeted at an organisation publishing new research that weekend.
From APC’s perspective, we feel it’s important to integrate cybersecurity in our broader work on internet governance capacity building, because cybersecurity touches on so many other areas of internet governance.
This statement focuses on responding to the question: How can non-governmental stakeholders contribute to the implementation of the voluntary non-binding norms of responsible state behaviour contained in the report of the 2015 Group of Governmental Experts?
Efforts to bolster cybersecurity often ignore the human rights dimension, or worse, view human rights as an impediment to cybersecurity. This is a dangerous and misguided assumption. Cybersecurity is a human rights issue, and it is time to start treating it like one.
While pointing to the positive use of AI to enable rights in ways that were not easily possible before, this edition of GISWatch highlights the real threats that we need to pay attention to if we are going to build an AI-embedded future that enables human dignity.
Following a seven-year, windy journey, on 8 November 2019, Kenya got a data protection law. The Data Protection Act, 2019 has various positive elements and can go a long way in addressing the live issues in protecting the privacy of data in Kenya.
Countering cybercrime is a key challenge that requires international cooperation. However, the approach taken in the draft resolution “Countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes” is fundamentally flawed and would restrict the use of the internet for human rights, and social and economic development.
A damning new report from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, raises alarm about the rise of the digital welfare state, which uses data and technologies to automate, predict, identify, surveil, detect, target and punish the poor.
As an organisation that has worked at the intersections of human rights and technology for nearly three decades and fully recognises the critical importance of ICTs for the fundamental right to protest, APC welcomes the focus of the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights on this topic.
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2022
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