ICT policy
The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) and APC are happy to announce the date and location for the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica) 2017. This year’s edition of the Forum will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 27-29 September. The decision to hold the event here will contribute to expanding the physical footprint of FIFAfrica, which has since its inception in 2014 been held in Kampala, Uga...
Recently there have been a flurry of proposals to “regulate the internet”, which in practice boils down to more narrowly regulating online content. These proposals often emerge after high-profile revelations related to the role of online intermediaries in facilitating access to illegal or undefined harmful content. In order to suggest a principles-based approach to regulation, this issue paper highlights positive and negative aspects of some recent initiatives to regulate online content, ...
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. The report, recently presented to the UN General Assembly, covers a range of uses of digital technologies for wel...
APC's 2018 Annual Report offers an engaging dive into one year in the network's life. However, as comprehensive as it is, it is just a sample of the multifaceted and tireless work we all do at APC. As APC's executive director Chat Garcia Ramilo said in her introduction to this report, it is a compendium of "stories about how APC collectively strives for change," from what Bishakha Dat...
The value of being connected to a communication network is steadily rising. And yet, half of the world population remains unconnected to the Internet. Traditional solutions are showing signs of having reached their limits. Attempts to address this problem, whether through universal service strategies/funds, private sector initiatives or philanthropy, have met with limited success. This presents...
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg, The organizations below write today to encourage you, in no uncertain terms, to continue increasing the end-to-end security across Facebook’s messaging services. We have seen requests from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australian governments asking you to suspend these plans “until [Facebook] can guarantee the added privacy does not reduce public safety”. We ...
Human rights norms and standards integrate gender and development, and are respected and promoted in internet and ICT policy, governance, development and practice. This is a compendium of the highlights from APC's Annual Report for 2018. Contributed to policy by addressing new threats to human rights online The 38th Human Rights Council session saw the updating of its landmark re...
Research ICT Africa (RIA) and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) welcome this opportunity to jointly submit written comments on the South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) Discussion Paper 149 on Sexual Offences: Pornography and Children, published in April 2019. The Discussion Paper solicits views and comments on proposed amendments to the legislative framework that curre...
Welcome to the 18th monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks. 1. Events and conferences The Africa Internet Summit is taking place from 9 to 21 June in Kampala, Uganda. Read more here and here. Access Now’s RightsCon programme has been released, announcing the event taking place from 11 to 14 June in Tunis, and includes many sessions on co...
APC is implementing an exploratory project called “Putting cybersecurity on the rights track” with the support of the Mozilla Corporation. The goal of the project is to develop a research and advocacy strategy to ensure that cybersecurity policy and norms are influenced by civil society and progressive techie voices, so that these policies consistently integrate a rights-based approach. APC...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2019
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