Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

Japan is arriving late to the Trans Pacific Partnership table, but its participation already risks making Japanese law harsher while demolishing the hard-won victories of copyright reformers in the country.

Nineteen human rights organisations have written to U.S. President Barack Obama to raise the issue of the detention of human rights defender and blogger Mr Le Quoc Quan when President Truong Tan Sang of Vietnam meets Obama on 25 July 2013.

Skype has long claimed to be “end-to_end encrypted”, suggesting that conversations over the service would be difficult or impossible to eavesdrop upon; however, a recent “Guardian” report suggests that Microsoft has turned over Skype conversation contents to the U.S. government since at least February 2011.

Human Rights Watch, with over 20 technology companies and 30 NGOs and investors, sent a letter asking President Obama and directors of U.S. security and intelligence agencies, to take specific steps to expand reporting on national security surveillance.

The first round of talks in what the U.S. and EU trade representatives intend to be the largest bilateral trade agreement ever have begun; according to the first leaks of negotiation documents, it threatens to be yet another trojan horse for copyright and Internet issues.

A newly drafted international treaty gives people with visual and reading disabilities better access to copyrighted works; it comes as the result of collective efforts to carve out protections for the blind and reading disabled that faced years of resistance from rightsholder industries.

The diminishing trust between the U.S. and the EU as a result of the spying revelations could have a knock-on effect on global copyright regulation, and stiffen Europe’s resolve to better protect its own citizens’ online privacy.

An order from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has directed telecom Verizon to provide “on an ongoing daily basis” all call records for any call “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls” and any call made “between the United States and abroad.”