Access Now

This past year was rough. We saw a sharp increase in internet shutdowns globally, pressure to weaken encryption and legitimize mass surveillance, rampant government hacking, and other developments that put the most vulnerable people and communities — dissidents, activists, journalists, human rights defenders, and marginalized people — at risk for surveillance, censorship, and other attacks on their fundamental rights.

But that’s only half of the story. The other half is you — our supporters, international partners, and grantees who achieved real progress last year. You’re still going strong, and getting stronger. It’s going to take some serious collaboration to slow or reverse some of the trends we’re seeing — and that’s exactly what we’re hoping to do. We’re excited to work with and beside you for a better world in 2017.

Last week, Greenpeace Netherlands released hundreds of pages of secret “TTIP” negotiation documents. TTIP, or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is an EU-US trade agreement that has been negotiated in near-complete secrecy since June of 2013. This massive disclosure could help trigger a better-informed public debate as it provides much-needed insight into what could be the world’s biggest trade agreement — one that could impact our fundamental human rights, environmental protections, and much, much more.

But the privacy/security pendulum is always in motion. If Apple perceives a change in public sentiment, perhaps in response to future horrific acts, there’s no law that keeps them from changing with it.

Business considerations aside, Apple is under absolutely no obligation to continue encrypting its users’ data or making it harder for third parties to access. The company could change its mind at any time, or offer the government all the help it wants, without Apple violating anyone’s civil liberties. Its actions either way are entirely voluntary.

Which may speak to a bigger problem for technology users. As more and more of our public life moves from town squares to cloud servers, Internet companies increasingly run the governments of our virtual selves. The digital constitution takes the form of Internet protocols developed by the engineers; Internet laws are the terms and conditions of contracts between product developers and their customers.

California continued its long-standing tradition for forward-thinking privacy laws today when Governor Jerry Brown signed a sweeping law protecting digital privacy rights.

The landmark Electronic Communications Privacy Act bars any state law enforcement agency or other investigative entity from compelling a business to turn over any metadata or digital communications—including emails, texts, documents stored in the cloud—without a warrant. It also requires a warrant to track the location of electronic devices like mobile phones, or to search them.

The legislation, which easily passed the Legislature last month, is the most comprehensive in the country, says the ACLU.

Cubans are not technoprimitives. They have smartphones and computers and pirated movies and television shows and music. They do not, however, have easy, free, or open access to the internet. This was the choice of the Cuban regime, not the Cuban people.

This must and will change, and will bring about long overdue improvements in nearly every facet of Cuban life. The internet is a human right, and in both overlooking it and actively denying it to their citizens, the Castro brothers have denied them their sovereignty.