Entries from November 2011 ↓

The Information Commissioner’s Office have responded. You can read the full response here. (PDF)

To coincide with the start of the London Conference on Cyberspace, 11 organisations and experts on freedom of expression and privacy online have today written to the Foreign Secretary about the UK’s domestic Internet policies.

Pointing to UK proposals for greater controls over what legal material people are allowed to access on the Internet in the UK, Open Rights Group, Index on Censorship, Privacy International, Evgeny Morozov and Heather Brooke, argue that Britain’s desire to promote freedom of expression and privacy internationally is being hampered by domestic policy. The letter continues:

“The government now has an historic opportunity to support technologies that promote rather than undermine people’s political and social empowerment. We call for the UK government to seize this opportunity to reject censorship and surveillance, domestically and internationally, that undermines people’s rights to express themselves, organise or communicate freely. That is the only way to both enshrine the rights of citizens in the UK and to support these principles internationally.”

The full letter is available on the Open Rights Group website. The full list of signatories is:

Brett Soloman, Executive Director, Access,
Dr Agnes Callamard, Executive Director, Article 19
Cory Doctorow, Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Jonathan Heawood, Director, English PEN
Evgeny Morozov, author, ‘The Net Delusion’
Andrew Puddephatt, Director, Global Partners
Heather Brooke, author, ‘The Revolution will be Digitised’
John Kampfner, CEO, Index on Censorship
Tony Curzon Price, Editor-in-Chief, openDemocracy
Jim Killock, Executive Director, Open Rights Group
Simon Davies, Director, Privacy International