The Year in Digital Rights: We’re counting down to Human Rights Day 2021 with ten of the year’s biggest digital rights stories. — In March 2021, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child adopted a long-awaited general comment on children’s rights in the digital environment, marking an important step forward for protecting children online. The landmark guidelines set out in detail how to protect and promote children’s rights to, among others…

The Year in Digital Rights: We’re counting down to Human Rights Day 2021 with ten of the year’s biggest digital rights stories. — In July 2021, Germany’s data protection commissioner advised all government bodies in the country to shut down their official Facebook pages because of the company’s persistent problems with data compliance. The move was a principled stance by Germany’s data authority in a time when legislators across the world are interrogating…

The Year in Digital Rights: We’re counting down to Human Rights Day 2021 with ten of the year’s biggest digital rights stories. — In January 2021, after years of activism, Google workers unionised. The launch of the Alphabet Workers Union marked the start of a year characterised by tech workers rising up, banding together and calling out structural inequalities at big companies. The union was set up to hold Google accountable and ensure…

The Year in Digital Rights: We’re counting down to Human Rights Day 2021 with ten of the year’s biggest digital rights stories. — 2021 saw the rise of the #AbolishFrontex movement, an international campaign demanding the shutdown of Frontex, the infamous European border agency accused of persistently violating the human rights of people on the move. Activists claim that Frontex has caused the deaths of over 40,000 people since 1993. The outrageous carnage…

The Year in Digital Rights: We’re counting down to Human Rights Day 2021 with ten of the year’s biggest digital rights stories. — In 2021, the Facebook Oversight Board delivered its first decisions, sparking fresh criticism about the board’s effectiveness in holding Facebook to account. Digital rights activists have long called for better oversight of Facebook and other social media platforms, citing the urgent need to prevent censorship and ensure freedom of expression…

The Year in Digital Rights: We’re counting down to Human Rights Day 2021 with ten of the year’s biggest digital rights stories. — In May 2021, the controversial “immigration exemption” preventing immigrants in the UK from exercising their data protection rights was ruled unlawful. Following a protracted three-year legal battle by Open Rights Group and the3million, the Court of Appeal found the exception incompatible with Article 23 of the GDPR, marking an important…

The Year in Digital Rights: We’re counting down to Human Rights Day 2021 with ten of the year’s biggest digital rights stories. — In October 2021, two unions in the UK announced they were taking legal action against Uber’s racist facial recognition software. I n the first case of its kind in Europe, Uber is accused of using a facial verification system that consistently struggles to accurately identify people of colour. The App…

The Year in Digital Rights: We’re counting down to Human Rights Day 2021 with ten of the year’s biggest digital rights stories. — On 4 October 2021, Facebook and its subsidiaries went down for over five hours. Five hours may seem a relatively small window of time to be without social media, but the global outage exposed a world unhealthily dependent on a single company to go about daily life. People couldn’t communicate…

The Year in Digital Rights: We’re counting down to Human Rights Day 2021 with ten of the year’s biggest digital rights stories. — In July 2021, the Pegasus Project exposed the chilling extent of global mass surveillance by states and companies around the world. The results of this major investigative effort — led by over 80 journalists from 17 media organisations — dealt a devastating blow to global digital rights, revealing that many…