This is ORG's Policy Update for the week beginning 22/05/2017.

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ORG’s work

ORG published an election briefing this week, outlining the most notable digital rights' issues in the main party's manifestos. Visit our General Election hub for more resources and information.

Planned events:

ORG is running and promoting hustings where our supporters can ask MP candidates about human rights, digital rights, surveillance, privacy and censorship. The dates are as follows:

Official meetings

Javier Ruiz attended the CREATE board governance meeting this week.

National developments

Government wants to push for powers to break encryption after the election

The press reported this week that the Government intends to push through new powers that could force communication companies to weaken the security of their products. A source described as a Government minister said that they intend to push secondary legislation through parliament straight after the election.

The Government outlined powers to compel companies to create backdoors in their products and services in the Investigatory Powers Act passed in 2016. This law allows for technical capability notices (TCNs) to be served to the companies, specifying how they need to modify their systems in order for government agencies to access the information they want.

The Government needs to pass secondary legislation to activate these powers. A few weeks ago, ORG learned that theHome Office was running a secret consultation on this regulation. You can read our response in detail here. A further 1,400 ORG supporters also made submissions.

ORG argues that weakening the security of products can mean that there is a risk of exploitation by criminals and terrorists. The Investigatory Powers Act is merely concerned with the feasibility of creating a technical capability notice and does not provide any procedures for assessing risks to companies or customers. The Act does not set up a route of appeal for companies or their customers if the consequences of TCNs are too severe.

The recent NHS hack demonstrated what can happen when vulnerabilities are exploited by criminals. Furthermore, the Government is likely to face international disputes when trying to compel companies with no UK assets to build vulnerabilities into their services.

Jim Killock outlines more concerns with the Government approach to encryption in a blog about the terrorist attack in Manchester this week.

Facebook’s content censorship policies leaked to the Guardian

This week, the Guardian leaked a number Facebook’s guidelines for moderating content. They include information on how moderators should make decisions about whether or not to remove content related to violence, hate speech, pornography, terrorism, racism and self-harm. This content is often legal but potentially offensive.

Facebook's decisions affect the free speech of almost 2 billion people who use the platform each month.

The UK Government has criticised Facebook, and other social media companies, for failing to police what content gets published on their platforms.

The Government has called for social media platforms to take more responsibility for content on their sites. Jim Killock explains in his blog that

“to place regulatory burdens creating new legal liabilities for user generated content would be onerous and likely to limit free expression, which no-one should want to see.”

Facebook has pledged to improve this situation by employing more human moderators. While human moderation is preferable to relying on algorithms, the leaked manuals show how difficult it is to judge what is acceptable while protecting free speech.

This issue is likely to continue after the Conservatives pledged in their manifesto to regulate the Internet.

Paul Bernal, the lecturer at University of East Anglia Law School, analysed the Tory manifesto statements in more detail in his blog.

Europe

EU Parliament approves cross-border portability for online services

The European Parliament has approved new rules for online subscription services for film and TV. The rules will allow EU citizens to access the content provided by online services while temporarily in another EU country. Currently there are restrictions on the use of services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime or Spotify if a user from one EU country accesses them in a different EU country.

The application of new rules will require additional checks about a user's permanent residence. Copyright licenses differ between EU countries so using online services could constitute a breach of copyright licenses depending on the country. Online content service providers may take “effective and reasonable” measures to verify that a subscriber has not permanently relocated to another EU country.

The listed 'residence verification' methods include identity cards, payment details, public tax information, postal address details or IP address checks. The rules are compulsory only for fee-based online content services but do not forbid free services from making their content available across EU countries.

The draft rules need to be approved by the EU Council of Ministers. Following their final approval, member states will have nine months to implement the rules.

EU approves social media tackling hate speech

The European Commission has approved new proposals for tackling hate speech on social media platforms. The rules are limited to video content.

The rules are not yet public but are reported to demand that social media companies take measures to block videos that include hate speech, incitement to hatred and content justifying terrorism. This applies to platforms where the provision of videos forms an “essential part” of their services - for example, YouTube.

The proposal covers videos uploaded to the platforms and does not include live streaming. The new rules will be next debated by the European Parliament and are expected to be agreed on by the EU Council, Commission and Parliament this year.

Commission launched a consultation on the Database Directive

The European Commission launched a public consultation on the Database Directive. The Directive was adopted in 1996 and focuses on the development of databases through legal protection and the use of data.

The Directive offers protection to original databases under copyright law and the protection of databases where a substantial investment has been made. Owners can prevent the reproduction, communication or re-use of the content in their databases. The Directive also grants exceptions for teaching, scientific research, public security or for private purposes.

The consultation aims to obtain information to understand better how the Database Directive is used and assess its impact on users. The consultation will evaluate if adjustments need to be made to the Directive.

The consultation is running from 24 May until 30 August 2017. You can respond here.

ORG media coverage

See ORG Press Coverage for full details.

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