Security and privacy
Oral statement delivered under Item 3: Clustered Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy and the Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, UN Human Rights Council 37th Session, 6 March 2018 Thank you Mr. President. The Association for Progressive Communications welcomes the opportunity to engage in this dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy. We commend his report's gendered approach to privacy and surveillance and the recognition that ...
For Take Back the Tech! (TBTT), the internet is a space for play, exploration, experimentation and learning, as well as a vital political space of free association and expression. That’s why the APC Women's Rights Programme created a series of online sharing sessions so that TBTT campaigners and other curious cyberfeminists from all over the world could participate, create and put their knowledge into action to occupy the internet creatively. Take Back the Tech! Feminist Learning Circles we...
Phase 1 of Data Protection Africa (DPA) has launched! DPA is an online open-access portal that provides information on data protection laws and access to data protection authorities in 31 African countries. The portal also lists digital rights organisations which work in the data protection space in Africa. Phase 2 is coming soon. A full review of data protection laws in 31 African countrie...
As the Digital Society develops, more and more people worry that it won’t be the Utopia that internet pioneers once dreamed of; that it might even turn out to more like the dystopias that have featured in film and fiction over the years. Rather than an era of empowerment, could the Digital Society be a surveillance society? The most familiar dystopia The best-known fictional dystopia is proba...
On 8 January 2020, Privacy International issued an open letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent company Alphabet Inc., asking Google to “take action against exploitative pre-installed software on Android devices.” The letter is both a caution and a call to action against exploitation of smartphone users by manufacturers who put profit over privacy by pre-installing apps, known as “b...
Dear Mr. Pichai, We, the undersigned, agree with you: privacy cannot be a luxury offered only to those people who can afford it. And yet, Android Partners – who use the Android trademark and branding – are manufacturing devices that contain pre-installed apps that cannot be deleted (often known as "bloatware"), which can leave users vulnerable to their data being collected, shared and expos...
At the UN First Committee, two processes – the UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) and the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) – are currently exploring the same question: responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. This term comes from a 2015 report by the previous GGE, which defines it according to a framework of four components: 1) norms, rules and principles; 2) confidence-building measur...
We, organisations, collectives, companies, associations and trade unions, ask the French Parliament and government to ban any use of facial recognition techniques for security and surveillance purposes, now and in the future. We note that such technologies are already being widely deployed in France. In addition to the “PARAFE” automated border gates already installed in various stations an...
The undersigning civil society organisations express our concern over the global trend of persecuting digital rights defenders – including security researchers and trainers who act to protect and promote human rights. We demand the strong protection of their work and their recognition as human rights defenders. Either through laws that criminalise their activity or through judicial persecutio...
A range of spyware vendors including Italian Hacking Team, the Anglo-German Gamma Group, and Israeli’s NSO Group, have found a ready market in authoritarian and repressive governments in Africa and elsewhere. Similarly, systematic propaganda campaigns designed by meddlesome actors – including government agents and ambitious data analytics companies such as Cambridge Analytica working on beh...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2019
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