Katherine Maher

Ahead of RightsCon and SXSW, Access staff put their heads together to come up with our own list of questions for Edward Snowden, who is appearing today March 10th at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

Today, Access kicked off the third installation of our RightsCon conference series in San Francisco, with more than 600 people from 375 organizations and comapnies in attendance, representing 50 countries. One person who was not here is Alaa Abd El Fattah, of Egypt.

Alaa joined us at the first RightsCon, in 2011, as a keynote speaker on the relationship – often complex – among technology, activism, and true social justice. When he left RightsCon, he flew straight back to Egypt, to serve an unjust, politically motivated prison sentence.

Today, he is in prison again — again, without justice or cause. His family shared the following statement with us to share today.

Today, February 11th, internet users around the world are standing together. Today, individuals, civil society organizations, and thousands of websites will let the world’s governments know that we reject global mass surveillance at home and overseas. Today, we fight back.

Watch the U.S. State of the Union tonight and play along with the Access team: We’re bringing you SOTU 2014 Mass Surveillance Bingo.

The military “interim government” in Egypt is cracking down on any meaningful form of assembly, association, or opposition. Following the passage of a November 2013 law banning peaceful protest, dozens of activists and organizers have been sent to prison. Among them is Alaa Abd El Fattah, software guru, blogger and political activist. We join dozens of other civil society organizations in calling for the release of Alaa and all those unjustly detained in Egypt.

After President Obama today announced changes to the NSA’s mass surveillance programs, civil liberties groups expressed skepticism and concern over continued bulk collection. Groups including Access, Demand Progress, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Free Press and ThoughtWorks vowed to continue organizing “The Day We Fight Back” a day of international activism on February 11, 2014 to demonstrate widespread opposition to the spying regime.

Today, U.S. President Barack Obama gave a speech laying out proposed reforms to the U.S. National Security Administration’s (NSA) mass surveillance programs. In his speech, the President called for reform to the current bulk telephony metadata programs conducted under Section 215, including the introduction of judicial review; guidance and limits on the use of the data of non-U.S. persons; and the creation of improved oversight at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Access welcomes today’s news that Verizon Communications has broken ranks with telcos globally by announcing that it will issue a transparency report. It will be the first telco to do so. We call on all telcos to release regular, detailed transparency reports: Anything less is a failure of their human rights obligations and their investors’ expectations.

This afternoon the White House released “Liberty and Security in a Changing World,” the report and recommendations of the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. This five-person task force was convened by President Obama to assess the NSA’s communications surveillance programs and provide recommendations on reform.