• Secret TPP Talks Continue at Luxury Hawaii Hotel

    Trade ministers are meeting behind closed-doors at the Westin Resort and Spa in Maui this week to finalise the terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This is the first formal round of talks since the US passed the controversial Fast Track trade legislation in June, which has given US negotiators…

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  • European Data Retention Laws: an update

    This table was produced by Leanne O’Donnell – a senior lawyer and leading legal expert in the communications sector. You can follow Leanne on Twitter: @mslods. See also the original article on her website. The Australian Government looked to the European experience as a model for its data retention scheme,…

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  • EFA welcomes ALP decision to review data retention legislation

    EFA welcomes the Labor Party’s decision to adopt an amendment to its platform that calls for a review of the data retention legislation passed in March this year. As a long-standing opponent of mandatory data retention, EFA remains committed to rolling-back the worst aspects of this legislation, including the unjustifiably…

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  • EFA supports call to avoid criminalisation of cryptologic research

    EFA supports the call by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) for amendments to the Defence Trade Controls Act to include clear exemptions for scientific research and for education. Australia’s Defence Trade Controls Act was recently updated and now prohibits the “intangible supply” of encryption technologies, and hence subjects many…

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  • Happy 25th Birthday, EFF

    A quarter of a century ago this week, ignorance and overreach on the part of government officials led to the founding in San Francisco of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), as an organisation dedicated to protecting and promoting civil liberties in the emerging digital world. As the first ‘digital rights’…

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  • Vale Caspar Bowden

    It was with great sadness that we heard of the death last week of Caspar Bowden, privacy activist. Caspar had a long history of privacy advocacy, and was particularly notable in both the fight for public access to strong cryptography in the 1990s and the current fight against mass surveillance.…

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