The Freedom Online Coalition – a group of 32 countries committed to the protection of human rights online – has issued a statement on artificial intelligence (AI) and human rights, expressing concerns over the ‘use of AI systems towards repressive and authoritarian purposes, including through facial recognition technology and automated content moderation, which can enable [...]

The Facebook Oversight Board has started accepting cases on content moderation from users who have exhausted the appeals within Facebook, as well as from Facebook itself. The Board will be evaluating content already removed from the platform. The Board can also make recommendations on Facebook policy changes, which are to be implemented by Facebook upon review. [...]

In the fight against online child sexual abuse and exploitation,International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has joined the WePROTECT Global Alliance (WPGA).  The WePROTECT Global Alliance is a global initiative for addressing online child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) through bringing together the influence, expertise and resources required to transform how online abuse is dealt with worldwide [...]

According to the Guardian, a report of the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has shown that the UK’s Department for Education (DfE) broke the law in its mishandling of the national database containing details of every school pupil in England. After complaints from civil society groups including Liberty, the ICO found that the DfE had [...]

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) published the Kenya Digital Ecosystem Country Assessment which was developed using the Digital Ecosystem Country Assessment (DECA) of the USAID’s Digital Strategy. The tool looks at how Kenya’s digital ecosystem can be improved to establish a more inclusive, safe, and enabling environment for pursuing development objectives and [...]

In August, noyb, a European civil society group, filed 101 complaints against several companies based in Europe for failing to comply with the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) judgement of 16 July 2020. This judgement deems data transfers to Google and Facebook in the US under the Privacy Shield illegal because Google [...]

According to TechCrunch, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has published a new body of evidence to support its two-years legal complaint against  the unlawful exploitation of personal data via the programmatic advertising Real-Time Bidding (RTB) process. In a submission directed to the Irish data protection commission (DPC), ICCL argues the RTB process is [...]

The seventh South-East Europe Media Conference entitled ‘The New Frontline: Working together to Foster Media Freedom’ took place online. It was organized by the office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (FRoM) and the OSCE Mission to Serbia, in cooperation with other OSCE field operations in South-East Europe (SEE). Journalists, media experts, [...]

The Nigeria Identity Management Commission (NIMC) estimates that it will take three to five years to register all Nigerians in its national digital ID programme. Among activities to be undertaken during this time are registration of citizens and residents, harmonisation of state and federal databases, and verification and cleaning up of data. Digital identity stakeholders [...]

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has joined a coalition of 100 global civil society groups to submit comments on Nigeria’s draft data protection bill, which is undergoing a public consultation process. The submission said that the bill should “protect those fulfilling their duty as journalists” from censorship under the law, and “define ‘data’ in [...]