Ecuador

APC is pleased to welcome Acción Ecológica, an organisation based in Ecuador that works to counteract the environmental impacts of destructive economic activities, as a new addition to our growing network of members. 

Acción Ecológica is an organisation based in Ecuador whose work focuses on the impacts generated by activities like oil drilling, mining, shrimp farming, logging and tree plantations, hydroelectric plants, biotechnology, transgenics, bioprospecting and biopiracy. It works to strengthen food sovereignty and the defence of the rights of nature, highlighting issues such as the free circulation o...

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.