Tag:

rights

Microsoft Asserts Clients’ Rights in FBI Email Searches Fight

by Rajdeep April 5, 2024

written by Rajdeep

Microsoft Asserts Clients' Rights in FBI Email Searches Fight

Microsoft’s effort to halt the FBI’s so-called sneak-and-peak searches of emails may ride on whether it’s allowed to defend its customers’ constitutional rights.

The judge who will decide whether the case can go ahead told the company’s lawyers to be ready in court Monday to address earlier rulings that undercut their arguments. At stake is half of Microsoft’s case to block the US from secretly accessing customer data stored in the cloud, including email.

Microsoft drew support from tech leaders including Apple, Google and Amazon.com when it sued the Justice Department in April. They say the very future of mobile and cloud computing is at risk if customers can’t trust that their data will remain private. The federal law allowing searches goes “far beyond any necessary limits” and infringes users’ Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure, they contend.

The Justice Department argues it needs such digital tools to help fight increasingly sophisticated criminals and terrorists who are savvy at using technology to communicate and hide their tracks.

Disclosing the searches would undermine investigations and put Americans at risk, they argue. A decision for the US would give an early victory to President Donald Trump, who said during his campaign that he would compel technology companies to cooperate.

The case may never reach that point unless Microsoft wins the argument that it has the ability to sue – or standing – to protect customer privacy.

“Standing has been a barrier in cases that seek to vindicate people’s privacy rights,” said Jennifer Granick, a Stanford Law School professor. “It’s a serious issue in conducting constitutional litigation, and this case is no different.”

Four court decisions listed by US District Judge James Robart in Seattle all reached the same conclusion – Fourth Amendment protections can only be cited by individuals, and not vicariously by third parties. The most recent was a 2014 US Supreme Court ruling that the family of a driver who was shot and killed by police after a high-speed chase couldn’t invoke that right on his behalf related to a lawsuit over his death.

Microsoft’s lawyers may have anticipated the Fourth Amendment challenge in their complaint, stating that the government’s silent searches of user data have directly injured it by “eroding the customer trust” in the company.

The industry’s push against government intrusion into customers’ private information began in the wake of Edward Snowden’s 2013 disclosures about covert data collection that put them all on the defensive.

Microsoft said when it filed its lawsuit that federal courts had issued almost 2,600 secrecy orders barring it from disclosing government warrants for access to private email accounts. It said more than two-thirds of those orders have no fixed end date, meaning the company can never tell customers about them, even after an investigation is completed.

The Redmond, Washington-based company concedes there may be times when the government is justified in seeking a gag order to prevent customers under investigation from tampering with evidence or harming another person. Still, the statute is too broad and sets too low of a standard for secrecy, Microsoft contends, arguing regarding the other half of its case that its own free-speech rights are being violated by the orders.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group supporting Microsoft in the case, fears a ruling that the company can’t sue could mean no one will ever have the right to file a data privacy lawsuit under the Fourth Amendment. The people whose privacy might be violated will never find out about the searches, said Andrew Crocker, a lawyer for the group.

“We obviously think that providers should be able to raise the rights of their customers,” Crocker said. “Otherwise you’re cutting customers out of the equation when the government comes to companies with these secret gag orders.”

[Source:- gadgets.ndtv]

April 5, 2024 0 comment

Internet

UN council says blocking Internet access violates human rights

by Rajdeep April 4, 2024

written by Rajdeep

SWITZERLAND UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

The United Nations Human Rights Council is taking aim at countries that block access to the Internet as a means to supress free expression.

The resolution passed by the 47-member council last week “condemns unequivocally measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online in violation of international human rights law and calls on all states to refrain from and cease such measures.”

Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia were among a handful of authoritarian regimes that asked the UN to strike that passage from the digital rights decree. South Africa and India also called for its removal.

The non-binding resolution also asks nations to harness the power of the Internet to empower women and persons with disabilities, as well as promote literacy and achieve sustainability goals.

Internet blackouts are well-documented across China and the Middle East. The Turkish government recently clamped down on news outlets, as well as Facebook and Twitter, after last month’s suicide attack on Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport that left 36 dead and another 147 wounded. The government-backed action by Turkish Internet service providers was caught by watchdog group Turkey Blocks.

Digital rights group Access Now counted 15 Internet shutdowns in 2015 and says there have been at least 20 so far in 2016.

“Shutdowns harm everyone and allow human rights crackdowns to happen in the dark, with impunity. Citizens can’t participate fully in democratic discourse during elections. The Human Rights Council’s principled stance is a crucial step in telling the world that shutdowns need to stop,” said Access Now Senior Global Advocacy Manager Deji Olukotun in a statement.

The U.S.-based non-governmental organization Freedom House says governments are upping the pressure on Internet service providers and social media sites to block, filter, and remove content.

For example, transparency reports published by Twitter show requests from courts and government agencies have skyrocketed from six per year to over 1,000 in the three years since the micro-blogging site started releasing data.

Freedom House estimates that 34 per cent of the global population lives in countries that heavily restrict Internet access or content, and another 23 percent live in countries with partially restricted access.

The UN resolution, which is not legally enforceable, builds on its previous statements on digital rights and reaffirms its stance that the “same rights people have offline must also be protected online.” This is the organization’s third online rights resolution since 2012, but the first that specifically targets nations that deny access to citizens.

A number of countries, including Canada, have signalled a need to combat the efforts of political regimes bent on controlling free expression online. Ottawa pledged $9 million last year for a project aimed at helping citizens circumvent government imposed restrictions in repressive environments.

U.S President Barack Obama has said that access to high speed broadband Internet is “not a luxury, it’s a necessity.”

Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who copied and leaked classified information from the U.S. National Security Agency to several media organizations, called the UN’s dedication to the issue “good news” on Twitter Friday.

While the resolution lacks the legal authority to impose changes within countries that choose to censor what is a said and seen online, the move is being heralded as a critical first step in shifting the conversation about such actions into the mainstream.

“This resolution marks a major milestone in the fight against internet shutdowns. The international community has listened to the voices of civil society — many of whom have suffered under shutdowns themselves — and laudably pushed back on this pernicious practice,” said Olukotun.

April 4, 2024 0 comment

Education

Rights group: Iraq education system on brink of collapse

by Loknath Das November 3, 2019

written by Loknath Das

Across Iraq, 2.5 million children are in direct need of education support [Tom Peyre-Costa/NRC]

Millions of students across Iraq are losing out amid a shortage of teachers and education funding, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has said.

Across Iraq, 2.5 million children are in need of education support, including 775,000 internally displaced children residing in and out of camps, the independent humanitarian organisation told Al Jazeera.

According to NRC information shared with Al Jazeera, more than 240,000 Iraqi children were unable to access any form of education in the last year. The United Nations’ humanitarian funding appeals for education in Iraq have also not been met for this year, reaching less than half of the $35m required.

Over recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets to protest against the poor state of public services and corruption. Their demands include more access to jobs and better economic opportunities.

Tom Peyre-Costa, the media coordinator for NRC Iraq, said one way to empower young people would be to provide education and training so that young people would have a better chance of finding work.

“An education system on the brink of collapse can’t effectively address these challenges,” he said.

Teacher shortage

Since the conflict against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) armed group erupted in 2014, no new teachers have been hired, which has led to a 32 percent shortage, according to the NRC. In Nineveh, the second most populated region in Iraq, the number of teachers has plummeted from a prewar level of 40,000 to 25,000.

The aid group said that a lack of teachers has contributed to a high student dropout rate, particularly affecting secondary schools, where 28 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys are not in school. This is compared with primary schools where 9.6 percent of girls and 7.2 percent of boys are out of school.

In addition, a lack of contact time with teachers has hindered the performance of those children who are in school; many schools are now run in a system of two to three shifts a day in order to reduce class sizes, though numbers of students can still reach up to 650 per class.

Nada, a secondary school student in Mosul, said the lack of teachers was shocking.

“Today is my first day in school and I am in shock, we are more than 1,700 students and we don’t have enough teachers,” she told NRC.

Volunteers

With no new teachers hired since the start of the war, volunteers have started to fill the gaps in many areas. In Mosul, which bore the brunt of the war against ISIL, 21,000 volunteers represent almost half of the teachers in the city, the NRC said.

Volunteer teachers are generally subsidised through stipends paid by humanitarian agencies such as UNICEF and NRC, though some, such as those in Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps in Duhok, north Iraq, receive no such funding.

“The volunteers are typically not trained teachers and are either unpaid, or working on short-term contracts,” Peyre-Costa said.

He told Al Jazeera that since 2015, NGOs and the UN have spent more than $30m paying teachers in Iraq.

But for this current school year, humanitarian agencies said they will cease funding teachers’ salaries, in an attempt to pressure the government to hire and pay qualified teachers.

“Well qualified teachers, who have strong subject knowledge and effective pedagogical skills, are critical for moving from crisis to recovery in Iraq,” Peyre-Costa said.

IDP camps

Children in IDP camps have been hit particularly hard by the shortfall. At an IDP camp in Kirkuk, the Iraqi education ministry pays two teachers for more than 1,700 students enrolled in two primary schools, the NRC said.

In Hamam al-Ali camp, classes for the current school year have not started due to a lack of teachers, leaving some 5,000 children without access to education.

During the war against ISIL, 50 percent of all school buildings in conflict-ridden areas were damaged or destroyed, the majority of which have not been rebuilt, according to the NRC.

“Now we study in prefabs, it’s cold during winter and burning during summer. We are suffering a lot,” Nada, the student, said.

In some governorates across Iraq, announcements have been made that all support for IDP school facilities would cease from the start of this school year.

In Duhok, northwest Iraq, the Ministry of Migration and Displacement stated they would cease paying rent on buildings used as schools for IDP children.

As a result, approximately 60,000 children in 12 official IDP camps in the Duhok area were at risk of losing access to education, the NRC said.

A teacher counting students in the schoolyard due to a lack of school building - back to school day 2019-2020 in Aljaleel school, Mosul [Tom Peyre-Costa/NRC]

A teacher counting students in the schoolyard due to a lack of school building [Tom Peyre-Costa/NRC]

Peyre-Costa told Al Jazeera the closure of schools is one of the multiple government measures designed to encourage people to return home.

“But by closing IDP schools, the government just pushes children out of schools, not out of camps,” he said.

“The education of their children is often sacrificed vis-a-vis security issues, or simply the lack of a home to return to.”

[“source=aljazeera”]

November 3, 2019 0 comment

Education

‘Indian Campuses Under Siege’ Says Fact-Finding Jury of Human Rights Defenders

by Loknath Das May 15, 2019

written by Loknath Das

'Indian Campuses Under Siege' Says Fact-Finding Jury of Human Rights Defenders

New Delhi: In the last few years, the number of universities in Gujarat has swelled from 15 to over 50. “But these universities have no buildings, professors, vice chancellors, clerks, registrars, etc. Several of them are said to be in primary government schools or in tehsildar’s office.”

Professor Hemant Kumar Shah, of the well-known H.K. Arts College of Ahmedabad, stated this to a fact-finding jury put together by a nation-wide collective of human rights defenders called the People’s Commission on Shrinking Democratic Space in India (PCSDS), to delve into the state of university campuses since 2014.

Professor Hemant also added that the shortage of teachers “was so bad” in his state that he was asked by his head “to teach environmental science to all second semester students in the college together in the hall which has a seating capacity of 735 people, since the college didn’t have enough teachers to take division-wise classes”.

In February, Shah was in the news for resigning from his post as the in-charge principal of the college protesting the trust body’s decision to cancel an event in the institution featuring its alumnus Jignesh Mewani.

Ramakant, a student of the fine arts department of Patna University could identify with Shah’s outlook on the shortage of teachers in government-funded universities and colleges, mainly stemming from an increased cut in funding. Ramakant and fellow students have been demanding the appointment of permanent teachers among other facilities in their university for some time now. He told the jury members comprising PCSDS’ People’s Tribunal on Attacks on Educational Institutions in India that,

“The university doesn’t have any permanent teacher and even the ad-hoc teacher has been removed.”

The report, ‘Indian Campuses Under Siege’ Credit: Special Arrangement

The state of Delhi University is marginally different, he said, because although there are 5000 vacancies, “almost all are filled with or operated by ad-hoc teachers.”

Such testimonials of students and teachers – of as many as 50 institutions and universities from across 17 states – are now a part of a one-of-a-kind report on the condition of various university campuses under the Narendra Modi regime. The report, titled ‘Indian Campuses Under Siege‘, was launched in New Delhi on May 7, 2019.

According to Anil Chaudhary, the convener of PCSDS, a total of 130 testimonies of students and faculty members were received from these states between April 11 and 13, 2018. They spoke to the jury comprising Justices (retired) Hosbet Suresh and B.G. Kolse Patil, professors Uma Chakravarty, Amit Bhaduri, T.K. Oommen, Vasanthi Devi, Ghanasyam Shah, Meher Engineer and Kalpana Kannabiran besides journalist-columnist and The Wire‘s public editor Pamela Philipose.

It points out the drastic cut in funding universities, leading to a shortage of teachers and a steep hike in course fees (in some cases from Rs 5,080 to Rs 50,000, triggering the drop-out of students from mainly to SC, ST and OBC groups). Other key findings include centralisation of the admission process; increased privatisation of institutions through policy changes; distortion of history, syllabus and saffronisation of education; appointing loyalists as university heads; the rise of Hindutva forces within the campuses; suppression and criminalisation of dissenting voices; and use of legal measures to curb students’ protests.

The report records, in detail, many cases of students and faculty members who have had to bear the brunt of it, several of them belonging to marginalised sections of society.

The report also says,

“Testimonies presented by students and faculty before the jury revealed a socially exclusive and unjust system prevailing in the higher education institutions, designed to replicate the marginalisations in society. As revealed from the testimonies, the attacks of privatisation and authoritarianism in the campuses have changed in the social composition of students on campus, directly impacting the marginalised sections of society, in particular, the SC, ST and OBC. Coupled with this, the educational institutions have failed to address the systems of oppression and discrimination faced by students both inside and outside the campus on the basis of caste, language, gender, secularity, religion and region.”

From the launch of the report in New Delhi. Credit: Special Arrangement

Recording his testimony before the jury, Abhay Flavian Xaxa from the Campaign for Dalit Human Rights said ‘intellectual lynching’ of ST, SC and OBC students is occurring during the present regime. This, he said, is done in three ways: “physical discrimination, fiscal discrimination and barriers put up against the policies meant for the educational development of ST, SC and OBC students.”

Offering an instance, Xaxa pointed out that under a new directive on reservation for faculties, “in the Indira Gandhi Tribal National University at Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh, they advertised 52 positions for professors, assistant professors and associate professors. However, not a single post has been given to ST and SC candidates.”

The jury felt, “there has indeed been a systematic onslaught on the very idea of higher education in India…this is deliberate since an educated gentry can put questions to those who rule and is essential for the furthering and deepening of democracy.”

[“source=thewire”]

May 15, 2019 0 comment

Education

California expands Japanese internment education to current rights threats

by Loknath Das September 30, 2017

written by Loknath Das

Japanese American children from the Tanforan internment camp in San Bruno board a train for a camp in Utah in 1942. Photo: Chronicle File Photo, The Chronicle The films, plays and public broadcasts California now funds to enlighten students and the public about the horrors of Japanese American internment camps in World War II will soon be expanded to illuminate more recent examples of persecution — including the Muslim immigrants targeted by President Trump.

The legislation signed this week by Gov. Jerry Brown is just one example of actions by California’s Democratic lawmakers and policymakers to distance themselves from Trump. Some are mostly symbolic, like resolutions calling for congressional investigation and censure of the president, while others chart an independent course for the state in protecting undocumented immigrants and combatting climate change.

AB491, which takes effect in January, provides $3 million over the next three years for educational projects that link the mass lockup of Japanese Americans to ongoing “civil liberties injustices” against racial, religious or sexual minorities or immigrants.

As latter-day examples of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1942 internment order, the legislation cites Trump’s orders prohibiting U.S. entry of anyone from selected countries with mostly Muslim populations, and his campaign promise to ban Muslim immigration.

“It ties the World War II Japanese incarceration experience to what we see happening today,” said the bill’s author, Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance (Los Angeles County).

The bill itself declares that Trump’s actions “highlight the ongoing need for public educational activities so that no group or community is ever again unjustly targeted as Japanese Americans were during World War II.”

The Legislature passed AB491 before the latest revision to Trump’s travel ban with the additions of North Korea, Chad and government officials in Venezuela, prompting the Supreme Court to cancel a scheduled Oct. 10 hearing on the constitutionality of his previous order.

But the bill is only the most recent in a series of legislative swats by California’s majority Democrats against the Republican president.

In early September, the Assembly passed a Democratic-sponsored resolution, HR57, calling on Congress to censure Trump for his blame-both-sides response last month to the violent white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., which, the resolution said, showed he was “unfit to be a moral leader.” In addition to the Assembly’s full slate of Democrats, the measure had the support of two Republicans, Catharine Baker of San Ramon and Brian Maienschein of San Diego.

In March, the state Senate passed another resolution, SR23, along party lines, calling for a bipartisan commission to investigate connections between Trump’s campaign or administration and the Russian government. It also demanded that Trump shed light on any conflicts of interest he might have by releasing his tax returns.

More substantively, legislation on Brown’s desk, SB149 by Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, would bar presidential candidates from having their names on the California ballot unless they released five years of tax returns.

On a more far-reaching issue, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ threat to punish California as a “sanctuary state” for unauthorized immigrants drew a defiant response from state legislators, who passed measures further restricting local police from cooperating with federal immigration agents, prohibiting landlords from reporting tenants to immigration officers, and barring immigration officers from entering workplaces without a warrant. Those bills also await action from Brown.

State lawmakers have also approved $30 million in legal and financial aid to immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, whose protection from deportation Trump has proposed to eliminate. They have voted to ban contracts with the federal government to hold inmates in local jails or private prisons. And for good measure, they voted to name part of a state highway in Los Angeles County after former President Barack Obama.

“When the Trump administration is infringing on the rights of Californians, we’re not going to be afraid to challenge that, whether that’s through legislation or, as the attorney general (Xavier Becerra) is doing, through the courts,” said Kevin Liao, spokesman for Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County).

Becerra has filed arguments supporting the challenge to Trump’s travel ban and has also sued the administration over air quality, immigration and the proposed border wall with Mexico.

Brown, meanwhile, has responded to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord by convening his own international summit on global warming, in San Francisco next September, and promoting a worldwide alliance of government leaders committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The bill he signed Tuesday, AB491, expands an educational program that began in 1998 under legislation sponsored by then-Assemblyman Mike Honda, who was a year old in 1942 when he and his family were sent to one of the internment camps that held 120,000 Japanese Americans captive during the war.

Following a U.S. government apology and compensation payments to the internees under President Ronald Reagan, the California program offered grants from the state librarian’s office to community groups and nonprofits for presentations on the internment, the fears that gave rise to it and the civil liberties it violated.

The most recent grant recipients included producers of films, plays and museum exhibits on the internment, many of them designed for student audiences. A Los Angeles musical organization trained young students to perform in an opera, set in one of the camps. In San Francisco, the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, named for the Bay Area man who challenged Roosevelt’s internment order, had a state-funded media project on the impacts in California, where the largest number of internees lived.

AB491 will award funds to educational programs that draw connections between the internment and current threats to civil rights. The reference to Trump and Muslim immigrants — which drew some Republican opposition when it was added in a state Senate amendment — would allow, but not require, the librarian’s office to fund projects that compared the president’s current agenda to the abuses 75 years ago.

It’s not a far-fetched comparison, said Muratsuchi, the bill’s author. He noted that the children of Korematsu and of others who challenged the internment had recently signed onto legal arguments opposing Trump’s travel ban.

The idea, he said, is to make sure that “the lessons of the World War II Japanese American experience are remembered, and also applied and understood in the present context, whether we’re dealing with Muslim Americans or any other group that is being scapegoated.”

Source:-.sfchronicle.

September 30, 2017 0 comment