Akinremi Peter Taiwo

AT&T IS SELLING YOUR DATA TO POLICE T he Daily Beast recently revealed new details on AT&T’s intimate relationship with law enforcement agencies. Under a program called Hemisphere, they sell analysis of your private call detail records to law enforcement agencies. You don’t even have to be an AT&T customer or live in the U.S. to have your details included, and they will try to track you down if you change numbers. Because Hemisphere threatens your privacy, AT&T has tried to keep the program a secret. Coincidentally, AT&T told us this past summer they “rarely receive complaints that company operations have negatively affected users’ freedom of expression or privacy rights.” This is a chance to let AT&T know how how you feel about their disregard for your privacy. We have created a form to empower you to take complaints directly to AT&T. We have some suggested language, but please edit it as you see fit.Don’t let AT&T pretend we don’t car...

Sometimes I get into one of those conversations about the Internet where the only way I can reply is to quote from The IT Crowd: "Are you from the past?" I say that every time someone asserts that the online world is somehow separate from real life. You'd be surprised how much this comes up, even after all these years of people's digital shenanigans leading to everything from espionage and murder to international video fame and fancy book deals. But now that the U.S. has a president-elect who communicates with the American people almost exclusively via Twitter and YouTube, it's really time to stop kidding ourselves. Before the election, many of us (including me) would have shrugged off the fake news stories piling up in the margins of our Facebook feeds. Nobody takes that stuff seriously, right? The election of Donald Trump and several recent tweets from the House Science Committee are two strong pieces of evidence that, yes, people do. In reality, politics h...

One way of working out if the data you’re gathering is particularly sensitive is to do a thought experiment: what would happen if this data got into the hands of a malicious actor? Who would be keen to get their hands on it? What are the worst things that they could do with this data? Sometimes, though, it can be hard to put yourself in the shoes of your enemies, or to envision potential future actions. As a result, practising  data minimisation  is a keystone of a rights-based,  responsible data  approach. And sadly, it’s the opposite of the approach we’re seeing governments around the world take. Last week, the UK Government passed what has been described by Jim Killock, director of the  Open Rights Group , as the  “most extreme mass surveillance law ever passed in a democracy” . The law, known officially as the  Investigatory Powers Act , forces UK internet providers to store browsing histories — including domains visited — for one year, in cas...

EVERY AMERICAN CORPORATION,  from the largest conglomerate to the smallest firm, should ask itself right now: Will we do business with the Trump administration to further its most extreme, draconian goals? Or will we resist? This question is perhaps most important for the country’s tech companies, which are particularly valuable partners for a budding authoritarian. The Intercept contacted nine of the most prominent such firms, from Facebook to Booz Allen Hamilton, to ask if they would sell their services to help create a national Muslim registry, an idea recently resurfaced by Donald Trump’s transition team. Only Twitter said no. Shortly after the election,  IBM CEO Ginni Rometty wrote a personal letter to President-elect Trump  in which she offered her congratulations, and more importantly, the services of her company. The six different areas she identified as potential business opportunities between a Trump White House and IBM we...

Mexicans at 2016 IGF denounce human rights violations Mexican civil society organizations participating today at the 2016 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) come together to denounce the severe and systematic human rights violations within the territory of the host country:  forced disappearances , torture, violence against women,  the murder of 99 journalists  and repression of protests. The Mexican government has failed to impart justice and to conduct proper investigations: corruption and impunity rule. In such a context, offline and online realities are connected. We demand justice, respect and protection of all human rights. We urge Mexican government representatives to respect multistakeholder dialogues, and not to conduct acts of repression against dissidents before, during and after this 2016 IGF. We specifically condemn the following actions: First, the arbitrary interceptions of private communications that interfere with free speech and privacy rights, a...

Companies that partner to counter “violent extremism” online must also collaborate to respect rights This week four major tech companies —- Microsoft, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter —   announced a partnership effort  aimed at reducing the amount of “terrorist” content on their platforms. The companies committed to sharing “hashes,” or digital signatures, that will be used to flag images and videos online, to help with removing the content from each of these platforms. Taking down such content is risky for online expression, and countering violent extremism (CVE) programs  must be implemented with great care and precision . We appreciate companies’ concerns and call for consultation regarding important societal and security issues, but they cannot and should not address these problems through private enforcement schemes that fail to meet human rights standards, including for transparency and access to remedy .  Doing so would exacerbate existing problems w...

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