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Revelations of mass surveillance by government agencies. Invasive new spying legislation. Emaciated and powerless oversight bodies. Canadians have pretty much seen it all when it comes to threats to their online privacy.
In particular, the scale of the privacy intrusions exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the threshold for getting trapped in the government’s surveillance dragnet is problematically low — anyone, at any time, could be a victim and not even know about it.
All this has led to the very real danger that the Internet, the greatest tool for connectivity that...
Date published 04 April 2016
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It’s weird when you think about it. More than any other demographic, people under the age of 25 spend all our time online. We’re the first generation to grow up with the Internet, and we use it for everything; communication, recreation, work, art. And yet, when it comes to Internet governance, we’re almost entirely absent from the conversation.
That’s why myself and a few like-minded folks from across Latin America started the Youth Observatory. The Youth Observatory is a special interest group within ISOC meant to both make sure youth voices are heard in governance discussions and...
Date published 24 March 2016
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What is the state of online privacy in 2016? What are the key policy issues related to privacy? What are the steps that can be taken within the UN context to help ensure our right to privacy?
These are a few of the many points addressed by Joseph A. Cannataci, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy (SRP), in his first report released on 9 March.
As we mentioned before, in recent years, many governments and NGOs have been pushing for the creation of a dedicated UN Special Rapporteur for privacy in the digital age, in part as a reaction to public disclosures of the existence of...
Date published 21 March 2016
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The other day, I planned to take my 15-year-old son to the movie theatre to see “Hateful Eight” in 70mm film format. The theatre would not allow him in. Under article 240a of the Dutch penal code, it is a felony to show a movie to a minor when that movie is rated 16 or above. Even though I think I am responsible for what my son gets to see, I understand that the rating agency put a 16-year stamp on this politically-incorrect-gun-slinging-gore-and-curse-intense-comedy feature. All this is to say that in the (liberal and democratic) Dutch society, blocking and filtering communication is a fact...
Date published 04 March 2016
Blocking, Censorship, Filtering, Global, Human Rights, IETF, Internet Engineering Task Force, Internet Infrastructure, Networks & Trust, Open Internet Standards, Privacy, RFC, RFC7754, Routing Security, Security, Standardisation
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This morning at the 2016 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), four papers were given “Distinguished Paper Awards.” They are listed here, with links to the full papers:
Transcript Collision Attacks: Breaking Authentication in TLS, IKE, and SSH Karthikeyan Bhargavan and Gaetan Leurent (INRIA)
ProTracer: Towards Practical Provenance Tracing by Alternating Between Logging and TaintingShiqing Ma, Xiangyu Zhang and Dongyan Xu (Purdue University)
Forwarding-Loop Attacks in Content Delivery NetworksJianjun Chen, Xiaofeng Zheng, Haixin Duan and Jinjin Liang (Tsinghua...
Date published 23 February 2016
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NDSS 2016 is well underway. Yesterday, there were three wonderful workshops covering TLS, Online Privacy, and Useable Security. The rest of the conference begins today, covering those topics plus other aspects of security, malware, mobile privacy, user authentication, and more.
The web team is working hard to get all the papers published. You can find them at:
TLS 1.3 Ready or Not (TRON) Workshop: https://www.internetsociety.org/events/ndss-symposium-2016/tls-13-ready-or-not-tron-workshop-programme
Understanding and Enhancing Online Privacy (UEOP) Workshop: https://www.internetsociety.org/...
Date published 22 February 2016
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Our President & CEO, Kathy Brown, will again lead a group of us headed to GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the week of 22 February. As highlighted in our 2016 Action Plan, our focus this year is on connecting everyone who is unconnected, and promoting trust in the Internet. Both topics are highlighted in last year’s Internet Society Global Internet Report, as critical issues with respect to the mobile Internet. With its concentration of Ministers, CEOs, operators and vendors, from around the world, Barcelona is the place to be to build the visibility, reach, and influence of the...
Date published 18 February 2016
Access, Global, GSMA Mobile World Congress, Mobile, MWC2016, Networks & Trust, Privacy, Security, Supporting Women, Women in Tech, Other external events
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Have you ever lost your smartphone or had it stolen? Have you ever worried that your passcode may not be strong enough? Didn’t you have a sigh of relief when you remembered that you had enabled the feature that would erase your data after 10 failed attempts?
The Internet Society is very concerned to learn about the recent order from the United States District Court for the Central District of California requiring Apple to bypass or disable the auto-erase function on a seized iPhone and to enable the FBI to more effectively conduct a brute force attack on the device. Yes, the order is...
Date published 17 February 2016
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On 21 February, we’re holding a workshop on Understanding and Enhancing Online Privacy (UEOP) co-located with the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS).
The mainstream focus in privacy research has long been on designing software from the ground up, providing firm guarantees on the provided privacy properties. Such a "bottom-up" approach is undoubtedly crucial for achieving better online privacy in the long term. Nevertheless, there is also a clear need for "top-down" research, understanding online privacy in the present online digital user habitats and proposing solutions...
Date published 16 February 2016
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The big privacy and policy story of the day in the UK is the publication of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on the draft Investigatory Powers Bill - which is currently being pushed through an abbreviated parliamentary process.
The Bill’s authors get a rough ride from the committee. This is from the ISC Chairman’s covering press release:
“Taken as a whole, the draft Bill fails to deliver the clarity that is so badly needed in this area. The issues under consideration are undoubtedly complex, however it has been evident that even those working on the legislation have not...
Date published 09 February 2016
Internet Society
