Access Now Policy Team

Last Thursday, Europe’s top privacy watchdogs stepped down at the conclusion of their terms. This week, the European Commission has yet to name a successor for its most important privacy posts. At a time when the European Union is actively considering landmark privacy legislation and simultaneously responding to the Snowden mass surveillance revelations, this is at best a shocking oversight and at worst a deliberate attempt to undermine Europeans’ privacy rights.

Today, Access released it analysis and review of the President Obama’s Advisory Committee’s Recommendations for N.S.A. reform. While some of the suggested reforms could lead to welcomed increase of privacy protections, overall the recommendations do not go far enough.

Last week, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) released a statement detailing plans to release not just one, but two reports on NSA surveillance programs. The Board will release one report on metadata collection under PATRIOT Act Section 215 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), expected in late January or early February, and a second report on the targeting of non-US persons under FISA Section 702, with an indeterminate release date. These reports come on the heels of a parallel report by the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, released in December 2013.

One of the many recommendations in the President’s Review Group report on the NSA surveillance programs released last month was for the review of MLATs, or Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties. This was the second time that MLATs made the news in December: at the beginning of the month, eight major internet companies issued a series of principles for reforming government surveillance that including improving the MLAT system. Clearly MLATs are an issue, but what does this four-letter word mean, and why are they so desperately in need of reform?

Last month the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies released their report and recommendations on reform of U.S. surveillance programs. The criticisms in the report, and the detailed nature of the more than 46 recommendations, underscore how much the NSA’s current mass surveillance programs violate the fundamental privacy rights of people around the world.

Access welcomes today’s report by the Global Network Initiative on its assessments of the three founding GNI members: Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!. The Public Report on the Independent Assessment Process addresses how the companies in question respond to government requests “implicating freedom of expression or privacy rights” and describes the assessment of these processes against the GNI Principles. According to the report, all three companies were found to be in compliance with the Principles, as per a case review by independent assessors.

AT&T announced today it would begin in early 2014 to publish a semi-annual online report on the number of law enforcement requests for customer information that it receives, in each country of operations.

Today, Access is joining a day of action in the United State calling for reform of the U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) — the law known for giving the U.S. government the ability to access your email and documents in the cloud without a warrant. ECPA is one of the internet’s most outdated laws: it was passed in 1986, before most people even had access to the internet.

Swedish telco TeliaSonera is taking further steps to remedy its involvement in corrupt business deals in Uzbekistan, most recently by Monday’s ousting of four senior executives.

Next week the Internet Governance Forum will kick off in Bali, Indonesia. Access staff will be there, participating in a variety of pre-events, workshops, and high-level meetings — and we want you to join us.

The IGF is the annual meeting that brings everyone interested in internet policymaking together on an equal footing. Members of civil society, the technical community, governments and more can share their new ideas, test out their theories or agendas, and challenge conventional wisdom — all in the company of some of the most influential and experienced people involved in internet governance today.