Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

Narenji (“Orange”) was Iran’s top website for gadget news, but now it’s gone. Narenji’s front page is stuck in time as it was on 3 December, when the entire team was rounded up by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and thrown into jail.

In countries where homosexuality remains taboo or punishable by law, it makes sense for LGBTQ people to explore their sexual identity online. But the Internet is increasingly becoming a risky place for exploration.

EFF has long advocated for websites to support HTTPS instead of plain HTTP to encrypt and authenticate data transmitted on the Internet. However, a recently discovered catastrophic bug, nicknamed “Heartbleed,” has critically threatened the security of some HTTPS sites since 2011.

Last February, the Colombian media revealed that the country’s intelligence service carried out widespread surveillance of key NGOs, journalists, and leftist politicians, including their own governmental team responsible for negotiating a peace agreement with the Colombian guerilla.

The FISA Transparency and Modernization Act, meant to end the collection of all Americans’ calling records using Section 215 of the Patriot Act would actually create an entirely new government “authority” to collect other electronic data.

The Philippines’ controversial Cybercrime Prevention Act has been attacked by journalists and rights groups who oppose its draconian legislation, in particular, the libel provision that criminalizes anonymous online criticism.

EFF welcomes the news that Yahoo is carrying through a concerted effort to protect users across its sites and services by rolling out routine encryption in several parts of its infrastructure.

In response to a consultation being undertaken by the UN on the right to privacy in the digital age, Privacy International in conjunction with six other groups called on the UN to recognise that mass surveillance is incompatible with human rights.