 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2017) |
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| Formation | 2016 |
|---|---|
| Founded at | Melbourne, Australia |
| Type | NGO |
| Legal status | Charity |
| Purpose | Digital Rights |
| Website | digitalrightswatch |
| Director: Lucie Krahulcova Chair: Elizabeth O'Shea | |
Digital Rights Watch is an Australian charity organisation founded in 2016 [1] that aims to educate and uphold the digital rights of Australian citizens.
In 2016, largely in response to the introduction of Australia's mandatory metadata retention scheme, Digital Rights Watch was created at a meeting of representatives from Australian human rights organisations, activists, political advisers, technology consultants and academics. To coordinate a civil society response to the metadata retention scheme as well as other key digital rights violations, a new organisation was founded with the aim of aligning and supporting existing efforts.
Digital Rights Watch's mission is to ensure that Australian citizens are equipped, empowered and enabled to uphold their digital rights. The organisation works on advocacy, policy reform and public-facing campaigns that push for ethical data use by corporations, [2] [3] [4] good digital government practices and policies, [5] [6] a rights-based legal system, and empowered and informed citizens.
Digital Rights Watch is an incorporated Association, registered as a national charity with the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission. It is a member-run organisation, with a board of directors elected once a year at its Annual General Meeting. The organisation also operates an Advisory Council, which informs and advises on policy and strategy.
Digital Rights Watch is a member of the CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation, the Australian Digital Inclusion Alliance, [7] and the global Keep It On campaign. [8] In October 2017, Digital Rights Watch's Chair Tim Singleton Norton received a special mention in the Access Now Global Heroes and Villains of Human Rights Awards.
Digital Rights Watch often works in partnerships with other Australian digital or human rights organisations such as the Human Rights Law Centre, Amnesty International Australia, Electronic Frontiers Australia, the Australian Privacy Foundation, ACFID and others. Digital Rights Watch also works with international groups such as Access Now, Electronic Frontiers Foundation, Open Media, EDRi, Privacy International and others.
In August 2016, Digital Rights Watch coordinated a campaign, including media coverage, [9] [10] expressing concern over privacy issues raised in the Australian national census.
On 13 April 2017, Digital Rights Watch declared a national day of action against mandatory data retention, [11] calling for all Australians to 'Get a VPN'. [12]
In August 2017, Digital Rights Watch hosted an event as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival in which they profiled the personal metadata footprint of Professor Gillian Triggs, former President of the Australian Human Rights Commission. [13]
In September 2017, Digital Rights Watch partnered with Privacy International to push for greater transparency over intelligence sharing operations between governments.
In May 2018, Digital Rights Watch launched the State of Digital Rights report, outlining several ways that Australian citizen's digital rights are being eroded. [14]
Between October and December 2018, Digital Rights Watch coordinated a public campaign The Alliance for a Safe and Secure Internet against proposed legislation that gave increased powers to law enforcement to break encryption protocols. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]
In May 2019, Digital Rights Watch partnered with Electronic Frontiers Australia to launch the Save Australian Technology [ permanent dead link ] campaign.
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.
The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions that intends to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy of individuals. Over 185 national constitutions mention the right to privacy. On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), originally written to guarantee individual rights of everyone everywhere; while the right to privacy does not appear in the document, many interpret this through Article 12, which states: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with their privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizations, but it may also be carried out by corporations. Depending on each nation's laws and judicial systems, the legality of and the permission required to engage in mass surveillance varies. It is the single most indicative distinguishing trait of totalitarian regimes. It is often distinguished from targeted surveillance.
Privacy International (PI) is a UK-based registered charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world. First formed in 1990, registered as a non-profit company in 2002 and as a charity in 2012, PI is based in London. Its current executive director, since 2012, is Dr Gus Hosein.
Data retention defines the policies of persistent data and records management for meeting legal and business data archival requirements. Although sometimes interchangeable, it is not to be confused with the Data Protection Act 1998.
European Digital Rights is an international advocacy group headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. EDRi is a network collective of non-profit organizations (NGO), experts, advocates and academics working to defend and advance digital rights across the continent. As of October 2022, EDRi is made of more than 40 NGOs, as well as experts, advocates and academics from all across Europe.
Source protection, sometimes also referred to as source confidentiality or in the U.S. as the reporter's privilege, is a right accorded to journalists under the laws of many countries, as well as under international law. It prohibits authorities, including the courts, from compelling a journalist to reveal the identity of an anonymous source for a story. The right is based on a recognition that without a strong guarantee of anonymity, many would be deterred from coming forward and sharing information of public interests with journalists.
Big Brother Watch is a non-party British civil liberties and privacy campaigning organisation. It was launched in 2009 by founding director Alex Deane to campaign against state surveillance and threats to civil liberties. It was founded by Matthew Elliott. Since January 2018, Silkie Carlo is the Director.
In internet governance, network sovereignty, also called digital sovereignty or cyber sovereignty, is the effort of a governing entity, such as a state, to create boundaries on a network and then exert a form of control, often in the form of law enforcement over such boundaries.
The Calyx Institute is a New York-based 501(c)(3) research and education nonprofit organization formed to make privacy and digital security more accessible. It was founded in 2010 by Nicholas Merrill, Micah Anderson, and Kobi Snitz.
Proton Mail is a Swiss end-to-end encrypted email service founded in 2013 headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland. It uses client-side encryption to protect email content and user data before they are sent to Proton Mail servers, unlike other common email providers such as Gmail and Outlook.com. The service can be accessed through a webmail client, the Tor network, Windows, macOS and Linux (beta) desktop apps and iOS and Android apps.
Mass surveillance in Australia takes place in several network media, including telephone, internet, and other communications networks, financial systems, vehicle and transit networks, international travel, utilities, and government schemes and services including those asking citizens to report on themselves or other citizens.
The Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act 2015(Cth) is an Act of the Parliament of Australia that amends the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (original Act) and the Telecommunications Act 1997 to introduce a statutory obligation for Australian telecommunication service providers (TSPs) to retain, for a period of two years, particular types of telecommunications data (metadata) and introduces certain reforms to the regimes applying to the access of stored communications and telecommunications data under the original Act.
Riseup is a volunteer-run collective providing secure email, email lists, a VPN service, online chat, and other online services. This organization was launched by activists in Seattle with borrowed equipment and a few users in 1999 or 2000, and quickly grew to millions of accounts.
The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which received royal assent on 29 November 2016. Its different parts came into force on various dates from 30 December 2016. The Act comprehensively sets out and in limited respects expands the electronic surveillance powers of the British intelligence agencies and police. It also claims to improve the safeguards on the exercise of those powers.
ExpressVPN is a VPN service which offers privacy and security software that encrypts users' web traffic and masks their IP addresses. It is offered by a Hong Kong-based company registered in the British Virgin Islands as Express Technologies Ltd.
NordVPN is a Lithuanian VPN service provided by Nordsec Ltd with applications for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Android TV, and tvOS. Manual setup is available for wireless routers, NAS devices, and other platforms.
IPVanish VPN is a US-based VPN service owned by Ziff Davis.
PureVPN is a commercial VPN service and a part of PureSquare. It is owned by GZ Systems Ltd. Founded in 2007, the company is based in the British Virgin Islands.
A virtual private network (VPN) service provides a proxy server to help users bypass Internet censorship such as geo-blocking and users who want to protect their communications against data profiling or MitM attacks on hostile networks.