[Advocacy Advisors] Fwd: Week of Action: A World Without Mass Surveillance

Thu Jul 3 19:57:30 UTC 2014

Hi all,

The EFF and other organizations are putting together an international week
of action on August 25-29. The action week will focus on the 13 Principles
and be in preparation for the Internet Governance Forum that will be held
in Istanbul on September 2-5. It is modeled on the Copyright week that we
participated in at the beginning of this year.[1] For Copyright week, it
was great to have a number of community members join the action.[2]

We will prepare a blog post about User Notification, Transparency, and
Public Oversight. Once we have a draft, we will post it on meta to
hopefully get your feedback. :)

Let us know if you would like to blog about any of the topics from the
email below so that the 13 Principles organizations can help spread the
word about your posts.

Best,
Yana

[1]
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/wikipedia-shows-value-vibrant-public-domain

[2]
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/15/the-wikipedia-library-strives-for-open-access/

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/15/wikimedia-and-open-access/

http://blog.wikimedia.fr/wikipedia-illustre-la-valeur-dun-domaine-public-vivant-6331

http://www.wikimedia.org.il/%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%93%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%9E%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%A9%D7%9D-%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%A0%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%94-%D7%A0%D7%97%D7%9C%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%9C/

-- 
Yana Welinder
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
415.839.6885 ext. 6867
@yanatweets <https://twitter.com/yanatweets>

NOTICE: As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical
reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Katitza Rodriguez <katitza at eff.org>
Date: Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 3:39 PM
Subject: Week of Action: A World Without Mass Surveillance
To: Yana Welinder <ywelinder at wikimedia.org>

Dear Yana,

July 31th is the first anniversary of the 13 Necessary and Proportionate
Principles!

EFF would like to celebrate the Principles' anniversary by organizing a
week of action: A World Without Mass Surveillance. The goal is to raise
awareness of the most serious surveillance problem you are fighting
against in your own country and how that surveillance measure violates
one or more of the 13 Necessary and Proportionate Principles.

The Week of Action: A World Without Mass Surveillance seeks to explain
to the  general public the Principles in normal language (for mom and
pop) while raising awareness of concrete surveillance cases in your own
country. The value-added proposition is that by doing this activity
jointly, we would drive some traffic to our causes globally.

We would love that Wikimedia join this week of Action with one blogpost
about how surveillance affects the Wikimedia community and why you
support one of the principles you are highlight in that post. The idea
is to explain the principle in an easier way.

This is the idea:

Every day, each of us can write one (or more) blogposts on our own site
about one or two of the principles of the day. We can then aggregate the
links in one single page at the the N&P site (where we plan to generate
a big media splash):
necessaryandproportionate.org/a-world-without-mass-surveillance

I'm borrowing this idea from the IP activist community, who did
something similar for Copyright Week: https://www.eff.org/copyrightweek

To make a big splash, we need many groups as possible committed to write
at least one blog post (if not more) about the fight that you are having
on the Principles. We will add the logos of everyone who is committed to
join this world action, and we can aggregate all the links at N&P. If
you are interested, please do let me know!

Here are the list of principles grouped by themes and how we might focus
on each.

Legality & Legitimate Aim

LEGALITY
Limits on the right to privacy must be set out clearly and
precisely in laws, and should be regularly reviewed to make sure privacy
protections keep up with rapid technological changes.

LEGITIMATE AIM
Communications surveillance should only be permitted in
pursuit of the most important state objectives.
(An example of a topic: how UK surveillance law protections failed to
take into account the rise of social media hosted in the US, recently
revealed by Privacy International's case before the Investigatory Powers
Tribunal , or economic/serious crime exemptions in local law)

Necessity, Proportionality, and Adequacy

NECESSITY
The State has the obligation to prove that its communications
surveillance activities are necessary to achieving a legitimate objective.

ADEQUACY
A communications surveillance mechanism must be effective in
achieving its legitimate objective.

PROPORTIONALITY
Communications surveillance should be regarded as a highly
intrusive act that interferes with the rights to privacy and freedom of
opinion and expression, threatening the foundations of a democratic society.

Proportionate communications surveillance will typically require prior
authorization from a competent judicial authority.
(Examples: NSA mass surveillance -- necessary and unproportional? EU
Data retention decision?)

User Notification, Transparency, and Public Oversight

USER NOTIFICATION
Individuals should be notified of a decision authorising surveillance of
their communications and be provided an opportunity to challenge such
surveillance before it occurs, except in certain exceptional circumstances.

TRANSPARENCY
The government has an obligation to make enough information publicly
available so that the general public can understand the scope and nature
of its surveillance activities. The government should not generally
prevent service providers from publishing details on the scope and
nature of their own surveillance-related dealings with State.
(Examples: Transparency reports from companies: but where is the other
side of this equation? Which countries publish reports?)

PUBLIC OVERSIGHT
States should establish independent oversight mechanisms to ensure
transparency and accountability of communications surveillance.
Oversight mechanisms should have the authority to access all potentially
relevant information about State actions.
(Example: A look into the failings of parliamentary oversight?)

Integrity of Communications and Systems

INTEGRITY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND SYSTEMS
Service providers or hardware or software vendors should not be
compelled to build surveillance capabilities or backdoors into their
systems or to collect or retain particular information purely for State
surveillance purposes.
(Example: The recent successful push of an amendment in the US Congress?
Backdoors, lawful interception)

Safeguards

SAFEGUARDS FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
On occasion, States may seek assistance from foreign service providers
to conduct surveillance. This must be governed by clear and public
agreements that ensure the most privacy-protective standard applicable
is relied upon in each instance.
(Possible example: Access's MLAT project update? Spotlight on the the
Five Eyes agreement?)

SAFEGUARDS AGAINST ILLEGITIMATE ACCESS
There should be civil and criminal penalties imposed on any party
responsible for illegal electronic surveillance and those affected by
surveillance must have access to legal mechanisms necessary for
effective redress. Strong protection should also be afforded to
whistleblowers who expose surveillance activities that threaten human
rights.

(Possible example: EFF's Ethiopia case?
Wikileaks recent investigation similar to what Dinah from Human Rights
Watch)

-- Katitza Rodriguez International Rights Director Electronic Frontier
Foundation

--
Katitza Rodriguez
International Rights Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
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