ORG policy update/2016-w39

This is ORG's Policy Update for the week beginning 26/09/2016.

If you are reading this online, you can also subscribe to the email version.

ORG's work

ORG has been working on our evidence submission to the Committee on the Digital Economy Bill this week. We’ll make it available once it is presented to the Committee. Watch this space.
Tom Chiverton from ORG Manchester will be doing a talk on how technology can be used in communities and activism. The event will take place on 11 November in Manchester. You can find out more here.

Parliament

IPBill

The IPBill passed through the Committee stage in the House of Lords and is due to be discussed in the Report stage on 11 October.

The Third Reading of the Bill will follow on 25 October.

The changes made to the Bill in the Committee can be found here.

DEBill

The Digital Economy Bill went through the Second Reading in Parliament last week. The Bill is introduced to regulate access to digital service, digital infrastructure, online pornography, intellectual property, digital government, data sharing, public sector debt and fraud and Ofcom.

Here is ORG's briefing to the House of Commons.

More on the insider’s perspective on online age verification by Pandora Blake can be found here.

The DEBill will be discussed next in the Public Bill Committee on 11 October. The Committee is now receiving written evidence. The deadline for submission of written evidence is 27 October.

More information on the process of submitting evidence can be found here.

Other national developments

IP crime report

The Intellectual Property Office published its IP Crime Report 2015/16 detailing infringement trends. The report covered all areas of IP crime and showed substantially increased levels of crimes related to digital content.

General trends show decrease of illegal downloading of music, however there has been a notable spike in TV copyright infringement. The report concentrated on IP crimes committed through the use of Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) and stated that anti-IPTV work is one of the top priorities of fighting intellectual property infringement.

The crime report further focused on online piracy and provided statistics on illegal website blocking by search engines. Lastly, the report introduced a new component to an already ongoing campaign, Get it Right, advising the public on how to avoid pirate sites and obtain genuine products. The new component is a subscriber alert programme (supposed to start by the end of 2016) that will advise ISP’s account holders when their accounts are believed to have been used to infringe copyright.

NAO report on information protection across government

The National Audit Office published a report on how information is protected across government. The report was set to assess effectiveness of the centre of government in defining the strategic approach to protecting information and their performance in protecting information.

The report found that too many bodies with overlapping responsibilities operate within the centre of government, making it unclear to departments where to go for advice. The findings show that there are increasing dependencies between government and public sector causing blurring of traditional security boundaries.

It was pointed out that the Cabinet Office needs to make improvements to analysis of government’s performance in protecting information on a routine basis. The report concluded that few departments have the skills and expertise to risk manage their information.

These conclusions are particularly worrying in relation to the new initiative on data sharing in government due to be discussed in Committee stage of the Digital Economy Bill.

Europe

Switzerland's surveillance law

Swiss referendum last week showed nation's backing of expanding government surveillance powers. The new law will allow Switzerland's intelligence agency to spy on phone and Internet communications, place microphones and video cameras in private locations, and hack computers and install malware.

More than 65 percent of two thirds of Swiss population were in favour of the legislation. The Swiss government labelled the law necessary for intelligence services to do their jobs. The purpose of new powers is to tackle terrorism, attacks on important national infrastructure, spread of weapons of mass destruction and espionage. Use against violent extremism is not permitted by the new legislation.

Several concerns over sufficient safeguards were raised by the Swiss opposition. The Swiss government has previously demonstrated lack of criticism to defence and intelligence issues. Due to the lack of safeguards, it is possible an innocent person would become a suspect. This concerns is particularly underlined by the previous events when Swiss security services had held secret files on 900,000 individuals suspected of “un-Swiss behavior”.

Export controls on surveillance technology

The European Commission proposed changes to a law requiring special export controls for items that can be used for military or civil use. According to the changes, surveillance technologies will be under an EU export control for the first time.

The proposal has been criticised for the restrictions the law can place on companies’ business outside the EU. Companies will need a special license to export dual-use products to a place where they can be used to damage human rights.

Several large companies and nine EU countries made clear they are not happy with the proposal and triggered discussions on various changes to the new law. The proposal was delayed last week and only went through discussions this week.

National export control authorities will be required to report to the executive on how long it takes them to approve licenses. Privacy advocates also called for a transparency clause that would require national authorities to disclose what companies and products they grant export licenses.

Facebook ordered to delete WhatsApp data in Germany

Facebook has been ordered to discard all the data it managed to obtain on35 million WhatsApp users in Germany.

In his statement, the data protection commissioner of Hamburg Johannes Caspar said that Facebook has no legal basis to use users’ information from WhatsApp since they are both independent companies with separate data privacy policies. Commissioner called Facebook’s conduct misleading after they publicly proclaimed when WhatsApp was acquired by them that they would not be sharing data between them.

Facebook is planning to appeal the order and will attempt to work with the Hamburg’s data protection commissioner to address his concerns.

ORG media coverage

See ORG Press Coverage for full details.

2016-09-29-Campaign-Marketers' misuse of data 'worrying', says privacy group: Author: Shona Ghosh; Summary: ORG quoted on a worrying lack of transparency around how brands collect, share and use consumer data.

ORG Contact Details

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