Standing up for Australians' digital rights
Today, Access Now announces its selection of Lizzie O’Shea, an Australian human rights lawyer, broadcaster, and writer, as a recipient of this year’s Human Rights Heroes Award. O’Shea is recognized for leading work to highlight, analyze, and protest expansive surveillance laws in Australia. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet will present the award […]
“It’s incredibly worrying to see AFP officers carry out a raid on the home of a political journalist working to reveal an important public interest issue – a potential massive expansion of domestic capacity in Australian spy agencies. We fear that the powers given to the AFP to seize and search Annika Smethurst’s digital footprint […]
This election, you may have noticed that you’ve been inundated with targeted adverts from political parties, interest groups and individual candidates, who are all using Facebook microtargeting in their strategies to influence voters. For the past week, we’ve been running our own advertising campaign, to draw attention to this practice, to educate people that it […]
From exploding Ford Pintos to racist algorithms, all harmful technologies are a product of unethical design. And yet, like car companies in the ’70s, today’s tech companies would rather blame the user. Read the rest of this article on Long Reads This article is an excerpt adapted from Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, […]
We’re only a few days away from the Saturday reckoning of Election 2019, and it hasn’t been the best campaign for your human rights online. Here’s a quick overview of the major news stories, policies and announcements so far: Last week we released our election scorecard, ranking each of the political parties on their track […]
The Australian technology sector is generating new jobs and creating the industries that will house the jobs of the future. But new laws passed by the Australian Government are risking this critical industry – and at the same time undermining Australian citizens’ rights to privacy and an open and secure internet. Our technology sector is […]
Political announcements around funding for digital skills and innovation will be wasted unless encryption legislation passed last year is repealed, according to human rights experts. “Of course we welcome announcements to fund digital skills, artificial intelligence, technology and research and development, such as those proposed most recently by the Labor party, along with telecommunications investments […]
Digital rights experts are urging Australians to consider how political parties are protecting their rights online when they head to the ballot box. A ranking of party positions on key issues by online privacy group Digital Rights Watch released today reveals that both the major parties have supported legislation that severely compromises human rights and […]
As Australians consider how to cast their votes in the 2019 Federal Election, we wanted to ensure that some key digital rights policies are highlighted and addressed. That’s why we’ve compiled a handy scorecard of the major political party’s stance on these policy areas: Protecting privacy, including policies on metadata retention, facial recognition and internet […]
“We do not support arbitrary deprivation of liberty without proper due legal process. Mr Assange continued to seek political asylum in the Ecaudorian embassy in London, as is his right to do so, and the decision to revoke these protections is a worrying development,” said Digital Rights Watch Chair Tim Singleton Norton. “If Mr Assange […]
