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Yohannes Eneyew Ayalew - 18th July 2019
In the month of June 2019, Ethiopia encountered two major internet shutdown measures following a potential fear of leakage of school exams over the internet, and high profile assassinations. This blog post briefly sheds light on internet shutdowns during the reign of successive prime ministers of Ethiopia, and its impact on free speech. Internet shutdown […]
Ewelina U. Ochab - 26th March 2019
On 24 January 2019, the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR) delivered its judgment in the case of Catt v. the UK and found that police powers to retain personal data in its Extremism Database is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case concerns Mr John Catt, a 94-year-old activist […]
Michelle Bright - 20th March 2019
In R. v. Jarvis, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that children can reasonably expect that they will not be the subject of surreptitious recording by their teachers at school. High school teacher Ryan Jarvis was charged with voyeurism contrary to section 162(1)(c) of the Criminal Code of Canada after he secretly recorded female students while […]
Purushotham Kittane - 15th March 2019
The Indian Government’s Information Technology Ministry had recently invited comments on proposed amendments to the existing guidelines for intermediaries mainly governing how social networks (and other intermediaries) facilitate the flow of information. Through this, the State seeks to come down harshly on the spread of fake news. This comes to fore as the world’s largest […]
Aniruddh Nigam - 5th February 2019
On 20 December, 2018, the Ministry of Home Affairs in India issued an office order authorising a plethora of security and intelligence agencies to intercept, monitory and decrypt all personal data on computers and networks in India. The carte blanche nature of this authorisation raises significant concerns for the protection of the right to privacy in […]
Stephanie Tai - 28th November 2018
On 24th September 2018, Secretary of Security John Lee issued a ban on the Hong Kong National Party (“the National Party”) under the Societies Ordinance on the basis that the National Party posed a “real threat to national security”. Section 8(1)(a) of the Societies Ordinance states that the Secretary for Security may prohibit the […]
Nidhi Singh and Kushagra Mishra - 1st November 2018
The Supreme Court of India has emerged as a strong force in safeguarding the Constitutional values, and has had a memorable term of landmark verdicts, dealing with questions that relate to privacy, individual liberty and sexual freedom, to name a few. The Supreme Court in mid-2017 took the issue of ‘citizen’s privacy’, as discussed here. […]
Mariana Canto - 26th October 2018
In April 2018, the agreement entered into between ADMobilize and ViaQuatro, the administrator of the yellow line of the São Paulo subway, enabled the use of a technology to collect data related to the facial expressions of public transport users. Almost four months later, on August 30, 2018, an action was filed by the Brazilian […]
Vedika Pareek and Manya Oberoi - 8th October 2018
Recently, in a series of synchronized raids carried throughout India, various human rights activists and vocal critics of the ruling government were arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), an anti-terror law. These arrests have been widely criticized for being politically motivated as they are aimed at curbing the right of free speech and […]
Ewelina U. Ochab - 13th June 2018
Universities are meant to be places where freedom of speech flourishes. The issue of free speech in universities in the UK has been recently examined by the Joint Committee on Human Rights (the Committee), a parliamentary committee consisting of representatives of both Houses of the Parliament. The Committee considered the challenges encountered by students, lecturers […]
Didon Misri - 25th April 2018
When Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory in the November 2015 elections in Myanmar, bringing an end to nearly fifty years of authoritarian military rule, many local journalists saw the result as a triumph for press freedom. Two years into the democratically elected government’s term, however, press freedom […]
Devina Srivastava - 11th April 2018
In a landmark judgment (Common Cause (A Regd. Society) v. Union of India & Anr.) delivered on 9th March, 2018, the Supreme Court of India held that a person in persistent vegetative state can opt for passive euthanasia, and that a person can execute a living will to refuse medical treatment in case of a […]