Security and privacy
APC member Bytes for All has released “Social Media Ethics and Etiquette,” a booklet (v1.0) as a part of the 2013 Take Back the Tech! campaign. Its a compilation of best practices for social media ethics and etiquette, though rather than an authority on online behaviour, it provides guiding principles. Click to download the PDF.
In 2013, we learned digital surveillance by world governments knows no bounds. Their national intelligence and other investigative agencies can capture our phone calls, track our location, peer into our address books, and read our emails. They do this often in secret, without adequate public oversight, and in violation of our human rights.
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 joins NGOs around the world in supporting the joint draft resolution by Germany and Brazil to the United Nations’ General Assembly on the right to privacy in the digital age. The resolution asks the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to issue a report on the issues, and decides to examine the question on a priority basis at its sixty-ninth session. The resolution is signif...
On 21 October, 2013, APC and Tactical Technology Collective hosted the first Disco-tech. It brought together over 100 techies, human rights defenders and rights activists from the eight Internet Governance Forum in Bali.
The situation for Azerbaijani activists who work online did not improve after the IGF came to town in 2012. In fact, it actually became worse. APCNews talks to Gulnara Akhundova of International Media Support and Emin Huseynov from the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety about the impact one year later.
Mass surveillance programs of the US/NSA violate fundamental human rights of non-U.S. persons. The document available for download was submitted today by dozens of organisations in the American hemisphere, in hopes that the mass surveillance of the US will be condemned, reaffirming human rights principles, established by international human rights law.
In this year’s edition of the IGF the security of the internet was discussed from the perspectives of the users, governments and business. Several times panelists insisted that cybersecurity starts at home and people need to be sensitised to that. Yet, there was a major security vulnerability in the registration process that nobody noticed or raised.
by Alex Comninos, 25 October 2013 When registering for the IGF, you may very well have exposed your personal data, including full name, ID/passport number to criminals, spies, intelligence agencies and dragnet surveillance programmes.
We see from the headlines that the security of digital networks and information is becoming increasingly important. To shed light on the practical steps that members of civil society can take to protect themselves and their activism, APC and Tactical Tech are hosting a peer-learning session called a “Disco-tech” on the night before the global IGF in Bali, 21 October 2013.
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