Security and privacy
The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) passed a groundbreaking resolution on 29 September concerning the safety of journalists, which contained a number of firsts. This resolution marks the first time the Council recognised that encryption and anonymity tools are vital for the work of journalists, and called upon states not to interfere with the use of such technologies. This is also the first time it elaborated on the specific threats faced by women journalists, both online and offline, as well a...
In collecting essays for this third volume in the Shifting Power and Human Rights Diplomacy series, the editors started from an open question, rather than an assumption. The key question of this volume is to what extent South Africa has used its power and influence for human rights promotion and protection abroad, and whether it is likely to do so in the future. Following earlier publications on Brazil and India, Strategic Studies, an initiative of the Dutch section of Amnesty International, ...
The official Black Lives Matter website – http://blacklivesmatter.com – has experienced a massive denial of service attack starting this past weekend and continuing at this time. The site remains functional due largely to the protections provided by Deflect, a program made available by eQualit.ie. Black Lives Matter, a May First/People Link member that is supported by the Design Action Coll...
During 2011, in the period dubbed the “Arab Spring”, the internet was a space for mobilisation. Since then, it has also become a space for oppression of activism and dissent. In countries where demonstrations calling for democracy erupted, authoritarian regimes resurfaced in different forms and shapes with intensifying violations of the human rights of citizens. While one cannot ignore the ...
UPDATE: 18 April 2016: AEPROVI has issued a statement with their position in relation to this case. On 28 March 2014, users in Ecuador reported accessibility issues to Google and YouTube websites. The reason for the outage was not known at the time. Two years later, on 14 April 2016, a leaked document surfaced that explains those websites were systematically blocked. According to a leaked inte...
Suggestions for right to privacy-related questions to be included in the list of issues on South Africa, Human Rights Committee, 114th session, June-July 2015 Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides for the right of every person to be protected against arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence as well as against u...
Submission in advance of the consideration of the periodic report of South Africa, Human Rights Committee, 116th Session, 7-31 March 2016 Privacy International, Right2Know, and the Association for Progressive Communications (hereinafter “the organisations”) note the written replies by the government of South Africa to the list of issues on South Africa’s laws, policies and practices relat...
When a group of us “organizational security practitioners”1 gathered in Prague this February, we were cautiously optimistic about what we could achieve. Many security experts and practitioners have been gaining invaluable experience while working to strengthen human right defenders and civil society organisations’ awareness, ability and confidence in thwarting security threats whi...
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