The indiscriminate retention of emails and electronic communications has been ruled illegal by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), its highest court. This could potentially put the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), often called the Snooper's Charter, in jeopardy. This is the second time the British government has lost in EU …
Read More »Investigatory Powers repeal petition reaches 119,000 signatures
An online petition demanding that the UK government repeal the newly installed surveillance laws made possible by the Investigatory Powers Bill has now passed the threshold for debate in parliament. It needed at least 100,000 signatures, but has continued on since then and is closing on on 120,000 at the …
Read More »ORG concerned over GCHQ sovereignty under new U.S. president
With the NSA and GCHQ so embedded with one another, concerns now arise that following the United States' presidential election, will GCHQ be able to maintain some autonomy in a world where Trump is president? This a real concern for privacy lobbyists, like the Open Rights Group, which wonders if …
Read More »Open Rights Groups slams porn censorship proposal
Digital advocacy organisation, the Open Rights Group, has lambasted a number of politicians for making a proposed amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, which would make it perfectly legal to block porn sites which don't add effective age registration. On top of labelling the idea censorship, the ORG criticised the …
Read More »Black Mirror? Admiral wants to use your Facebook posts for quotes
A recent episode of Black Mirror that addressed the idea of social networking ratings affecting the real world, could be closer to reality than you might think. Admiral is currently looking to use analysis of Facebook posts, searching for triggers like exclamation points and confident statements, as a bearing on …
Read More »Everything we were worried about with the TPP was true
The Trans Pacific Partnership is the other side of the world's TTIP. It's a piece of legislation masquerading as a trade deal, which for a long time, leaked drafts of have scared privacy campaigners, doctors, tech companies, nationalists and just about every internet user who can wrap their head around …
Read More »Open Rights Group calls on members to combat GCHQ
The Open Rights Group is a big proponent of, above all else, open rights. That means it champions the rights of individuals online, including freedoms of expression, freedoms of speech, information and privacy. With all of the Edward Snowden revelations and similar in the past couple of years, it's had …
Read More »GCHQ wants even more tech-giant cooperation
One of the keystone shocks of the big Edward Snowden reveals last year, was that tech giants like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and many others had been forced into handing over information to the governments in the five-eyes intelligence alliance (USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada), without being able to …
Read More »Open Rights Group wants to build ORG Scotland
With the referendum on whether Scotland will remain part of Great Britain or go it alone coming in just two weeks time, whatever the result, many are hoping it leads to more rights for the Scottish people and certainly more control over their own future. With that in mind, the …
Read More »‘Department of Dirty’ parody mocks Porn Filters
The Open Rights Group has launched a new campaign of mockery aimed squarely at David Cameron's porn filters, with a video promoting its “Department of Dirty.” In the fictional – but not far off – world portrayed, accessing anything remotely sounding like adult material is much harder and much more …
Read More »Don’t forget the UK rushed through the DRIP snooping law
Do you know what the government hopes the most about its recently rushed through DRIP legislation? That you'll forget about it. For those that don't know, DRIP, or the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers law, is a bill that was pushed through last week that forces ISPs and in-fact any …
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