February, 05 2016, 01:00pm EDT
Guinea: Protect Phone Users' Privacy
Mass Data Collection Could Expose Personal Information
DAKAR
The Guinean government should ensure telecommunications companies are not required to hand over in bulk the personal data of mobile phone users, Human Rights Watch said yesterday in a letter to Prime Minister Mamady Youla. The government should enact measures to ensure that any intrusion of phone users' privacy is necessary, proportionate, and clearly defined in law.
On January 6, 2016, Guinea's telecommunications regulator, the Authority for Regulation of Mail and Telecommunications (Autorite de Regulation des Postes et Telecommunications, ARPT), sent a letter to Guinea's four major mobile phone companies saying that the ARPT planned to "put in place a center for control and oversight of traffic (voice and data)" to verify revenues of service providers for tax assessment purposes, but that could also allow access to personal data.
"While governments should be able to enforce tax regulations, they shouldn't do that in a way that impinges on the right to privacy," said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The ARPT shouldn't put in place any system that gives them access to customers' sensitive personal information."
In a January 19 letter, three telecom operators stated that they would not comply without greater clarity about the objectives and legal basis for the request. ARPT representatives told Human Rights Watch that the information was sought for tax purposes only and that they would meet with phone company operators to try to resolve the issue. Human Rights Watch received information that two of those companies had agreed to comply with the government's request.
The proposed system, if connected directly to the telecommunications company's networks and billing systems, could allow the regulator to monitor all data and voice traffic and, if misused, would give the operator, the regulator, and potentially other government departments' back-door access to customers' call records.
As part of the implementation of the new system, the ARPT had also requested access to parts of the companies' phone records - known as "CDRs" - for the month of December 2015, as well as the necessary technical information to decode the CDRs.
Although CDRs do not reveal the contents of a phone call, they can include the phone numbers of both parties on the call, the time and date, the call duration, and even the approximate location of the people making the call. Such data can reveal sensitive information about a person's contacts and movements, especially when aggregated. Indeed, this information often can reveal more about a person's private life than the actual content of conversations.
While governments should have the ability to enforce telecommunications and tax regulations, requests for documentation should not disproportionately burden the right to privacy and other related rights. If phone data is being sought for other reasons, such as national security or law enforcement, then any government request should require judicial supervision and specific justification, and should be targeted only at individuals suspected of wrongdoing.
The Guinean government should clarify whether, in requesting records from phone operators, the ARPT, or any other government agency, has obtained or will obtain sensitive customer information. Any sensitive customer information acquired in response to the January 6, 2016 request should be deleted.
Before moving forward with future requests for call data or with a central control system, the government should ensure the necessity and proportionality of any method used to verify tax revenue and prevent fraud that involves intrusions on privacy. The government should also ensure that any effort to gain access to data held by telecommunications companies respects privacy and other rights.
"While Guinea's phone companies have an obligation to accurately report on their revenue and tax obligations, they should resist any attempt by the government to obtain access to sensitive personal information from their customers," Wong said. "Phone companies should also be transparent about the government's demands and the information they share with it."
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
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A U.S.-based consumer watchdog unveiled a legal memo Wednesday detailing how local or state prosecutors could bring criminal charges against Big Oil for deaths from extreme heat made more likely by the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
"As Americans reel from another lethal heatwave, it's important to remember that these climate disasters didn't come out of nowhere," said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel for Public Citizen, the group behind the framework.
Extreme heat and other deadly weather events, he continued, "were knowingly caused by fossil fuel companies that chose to inflict this suffering to maintain their profits, while regular people, like the victims of the July 2023 heatwave, and of so many other climate disasters, pay the price."
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"These victims deserve justice no less than the victims of street-level homicides."
The memo's other authors are George Washington University law professor Donald Braman—who also worked with Regunberg for a paper on "climate homicide" recently published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review—as well as David Arkush, director of Public Citizen's Climate Program, and Cindy Cho, a law professor at Indiana University.
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Last summer, the memo explains, "a lethal heatwave which would have been 'virtually impossible' but for human-caused climate change broke temperature records across the American Southwest. Communities like Phoenix, Arizona experienced a historic 31 days in a row with temperatures above 110 degrees."
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The defendants in a potential prosecution for last year's deadly heat, according to the memo, "would include some of the world's largest investor-owned fossil fuel companies and a national oil and gas trade association: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, BHP, Peabody, and the American Petroleum Institute."
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Pursuing those charges would require prosecutors to show that last July's heatwave caused deaths, climate change caused the heatwave, and the fossil fuel companies caused climate change. The memo lays out how they could do all three—thanks in part to advances in attribution science—and explores various potential defenses.
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Welcoming the memo's release amid more widely anticipated extreme heat, author and climate activist Bill McKibben stressed that "what's happened to the climate is a crime: After fair warning from scientists about what would happen, Big Oil went right ahead pouring carbon into the atmosphere, and now there's a huge pile of dead bodies (and a larger one of dead dreams)."
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Why is this so predictable? The head of the NTSB said Norfolk Southern repeatedly tried to interfere with the agency’s investigation into the East Palestine derailment. Oh, and the venting and burning of the chemicals was unnecessary and they failed to disclose it, too.
“Norfolk… pic.twitter.com/BrKYD0Cm6s
— Truthstream Media (@truthstreamnews) June 26, 2024
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That vent-and-burn was "not necessary," says the NTSB's new report, which is set to be finalized in the coming weeks. Homendy had previously said as much while testifying to a congressional committee in March, and a former Environmental Protection Agency employee also said that the incineration likely went against federal regulations, as Common Dreamsreported in March.
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Tuesday's hearing helped clarify why the flawed decision to burn the vinyl chloride was made: Norfolk Southern didn't share all available information with authorities, and pressured them to approve the burn immediately.
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"There was another option: Let it cool down," Homendy said previously.
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The company's lack of transparency began even earlier: Firefighters and emergency personnel weren't told which hazardous materials were on board until an hour after they arrived.
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Norfolk Southern issued a statement in response to the NTSB's findings.
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The Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported that at least 34 people, mostly children, have died of severe malnutrition.
One in five households have been regularly going whole days without food, even though aid deliveries have increased in recent weeks.
Aid groups and Palestinians have warned that air drops of humanitarian aid are not sufficient to avert the starvation crisis that has been spiraling out of control since October 2023, when Israel's military began its attacks, claiming it was targeting Hamas even as it repeatedly bombed civilian infrastructure.
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"While people in the north of Gaza have been temporarily brought back from the brink of famine, which had been predicted by the IPC for May, this is only because limited aid was allowed to reach those most in need," said Save the Children.
The IPC was able to determine that roughly 745,000 children and adults face acute malnutrition and an increasing risk of death from starvation, which the monitoring system classifies as "emergency conditions of food insecurity."
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Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier in May said that Israel's blocking of humanitarian aid in Gaza ultimately led him to conclude that the Israeli government is committing genocide in the enclave. In January, the International Court of Justice issued an interim ruling saying that Palestinians' right to be protected from genocide were "at a real risk of irreparable damage."
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