Ecuador
While emergency measures like these are adopted with the aim of slowing the spread of the virus in order to protect public health, it is crucial to ensure that any use of surveillance technology for these purposes strictly adheres to the criteria of necessity and proportionality.
A number of key issues for internet rights are on the agenda at HRC41, including the surveillance technology industry and freedom of assembly and association in the digital age. The session also presents the opportunity to address critical violations of internet rights in places like Ecuador, Myanmar, Palestine, Sudan and Tanzania, among others.
Over the past days, hundreds of people have used the Ecuador Disaster Map to report needs, requests and offers of help through text messages, email or the web, contributing to a crowdsourced map of the situation on the ground. APCNews spoke with Valeria Betancourt, head of the APC policy programme and one of the organisers of this initiative.
APC’s efforts to ensure affordable and equitable internet access focus significantly on radio spectrum. While use of wireless internet, particularly through mobile devices, is growing exponentially in the developing world, access to reliable and affordable broadband continues to be a challenge, especially for remote and rural locations. Open, development-oriented spectrum management has great...
Article 474 of the new Ecuadorian criminal code legalises systematic surveillance of internet communications, flagrantly violating citizens’ rights to privacy. Valeria Betancourt, APC policy manager, analyses the problematic aspects of the article.
APC is currently preparing for the 5th LAC preparatory Internet Governance Forum, to be held in Bogota, Columbia on 24-26 September 2012. We invite all actors interested in ICT for development, ICT policies and internet governance issues to help shape the dialogue agenda by completing a short survey.
Together with its partners, APC is pleased to announce the fifth regional preparatory meeting in LAC for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), to be held in late 2012. As with the four previous IGF events, the purpose of the meeting is to provide a space for multi-stakeholder political dialogue.
APC’s submission for Ecuador to the Universal Period Review process, with support from CIESPAL and Radialistas Apasionadas y Apasionados, highlights the critical importance of the Internet for human rights, as well as social and economic development.
Ecuador’s new constitution has created opportunities for democratising the spectrum based on a renewed vision of rights, and clearer definitions of the competencies required by the bodies that formulate policy and regulations. The priority now are civil society discussions on the legal reforms the new constitution demands says Marco Navas Alvear.
The Fourth Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will take place from August 8th to 11th, 2011 in the city of Port Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The event will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
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