During her speech at the virtual Singapore FinTech Festival 2020, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva pinpointed how the digital future will hinge on key four cornerstones. (a) Private sector innovation: to measure the needs of people and businesses, provide diverse products and services, and undertake the risks necessary for innovation. (b) [...]

The Broadband Cost Reduction Directive stewarded by the European Commission is intent on facilitating and encouraging the implementation of high-speed communication networks through deployment cost reductions. Public consultation hopes to collect views and input from stakeholders on the implementation to analyse the past while examining future options. The evidence that the Commission has gathered so [...]

A resolution of the European Council reiterates strong support for encryption but also requires enabling law enforcement to access content in a readable and usable format where authorisation is lawfully issued. The resolution calls for an active discussion with the technology industry - in particular national and international communication service providers (while also involving research [...]

The Austrian Supreme Court has delivered its final judgement in the case Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland Ltd, requiring Facebook to delete all defamatory statements about Austrian politician Eva Gawischnig-Pieczek globally.  In this long-running case, the Austrian Supreme Court sought the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on preliminary questions regarding [...]

Privacy International (PI) and 13 other civil society organisations from Europe and Africa are calling for urgent reforms to EU aid and co-operation programmes to ensure they promote privacy protections in third countries and do not facilitate the use of surveillance that violates fundamental rights. The recent public release of hundreds of EU documents indeed [...]

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 [...]