Companies from Finland, Israel, New Zealand, the U.K., the U.S. and elsewhere supported Colombian government agencies in buying surveillance equipment that allowed them to intercept communications, said a Privacy International report Wednesday, following a PI report Monday on the secret surveillance programs in Colombia (see 1508310051). “Peering behind the veil of surveillance in Colombia, a broad international network of companies are (sic) revealed to be behind some of the most significant expansions in surveillance capabilities in the country over the past ten years,” PI Advocacy Officer Matthew Rice said. “The surveillance industry has been found to be wholly complicit in these abuses,” said PI Research Officer Edin Omanovic. “Probing questions need to be asked about this cycle and how it can be placed within a human rights framework that guarantees that in the future it cannot be this easy for an agency to act outside the law.” There's an urgent need for more transparency and safeguards because the rise of the surveillance industry hasn't been met with the required protections, Omanovic said.

Sony CEO Kaz Hirai, hosting his company’s IFA news conference Wednesday in Berlin, promised the company's mantra will be to “make major strides” in innovation to create products that will touch consumers in a “deeper and even more profound way” than in the past. Sony introduced its new Xperia Z5 smartphones in a “compact” 4.6-inch screen size and a 5.5-inch step-up “premium” version that Sony is billing as the world’s first 4K smartphone. Both versions feature a variety of camera innovations, Hirai said.

An FCC order dismissing a Voice on the Net Coalition petition for reconsideration of an order imposing reporting duties on international VoIP providers was published in the Federal Register Tuesday. The order also required "submarine cable landing licensees to file reports identifying capacity they own or lease on each submarine cable," the FR said.

Huawei opened its first Middle East customer service center in Dubai as part of the company’s ongoing expansion in the region, it said Monday. The center will cater exclusively to customers using the company’s flagship device series, it said. The Middle East region, with 48 percent growth year over year in the first half 2015, played a significant role in Huawei’s growth in the period, the company said. Huawei had revenue of $9 billion in the first half, compared with $12.2 billion for all of 2014, it said. Total smartphone shipments in the Middle East and Africa are forecast to reach 155 million units this year, Huawei said, citing IDC figures, which showed Huawei as the No. 2 smartphone brand in the Middle East and Africa region with 8.9 percent of shipments in 2014. Huawei operates in more than 170 countries, with two-thirds of its revenue from markets outside of China, it said.

Despite international scrutiny after surveillance scandals in recent years, Colombia’s intelligence and police agencies built their own secret and unlawful surveillance systems that have the capability to monitor mobile and Internet communications, Privacy International said in a report released Monday. The report said the Integrated Recording System was developed in 2005 and was capable of “monitoring 3G mobile phone networks as well as trunk lines, carrying voice and data communications for the whole country,” the report said. The surveillance system was created as a result of “institutional rivalries between the different security agencies,” it said. The Administrative Department of Security (DAS), which was dissolved in 2011 after revelations it spied on journalists, judges, opposition politicians and human rights activists, also had separate surveillance capabilities. “The exposure of DAS’ secret probe should expand the existing investigation to consider whether there is more to this scandal than the abuse of one surveillance system,” said Privacy International Advocacy Officer Matthew Rice. News of a previously unheard of mass surveillance system “points out serious problems of transparency of and control over expenditures on intelligence activities, besides the obvious lack of legitimacy of deployment of mass surveillance systems in Colombia," said Juan Diego Castañeda, a lawyer and researcher at the Karisma Foundation in Colombia.

The EU will release online “detailed and extensive reports” on Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations in an effort to quell concerns over transparency, said Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström. “The only changes in my trade policy will be more openness, not less,” said Malmström in a Friday blog post. “That is the pledge I gave at the beginning of my mandate. I am committed to keeping that promise.” The U.S. has come under fire for insufficient transparency in TTIP and Trans-Pacific Partnership talks.

Twitter cut off the Open State Foundation’s (OSF) access Friday to Twitter’s application programming interface (API) for its Politwoops and Diplotwoops websites, which archive diplomats’ and politicians’ deleted tweets, Open State Foundation said Sunday. Twitter suspended API access for the U.S. version of Politwoops in May (see 1506040057). Politwoops' more than 30 other versions for national and regional governments and the European Parliament continued to operate after the U.S. Politwoops website lost access to the Twitter API. OSF began operating Politwoops in 2010 in the Netherlands. Twitter’s decision to suspend the remaining sites’ access to API “followed a ‘thoughtful internal deliberation and close consideration of a number of factors’ and that it doesn’t distinguish between users,” OSF said in a blog post. “Twitter wrote: ‘Imagine how nerve-racking -- terrifying, even -- tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable? No one user is more deserving of that ability than another. Indeed, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user’s voice.’” Twitter didn’t comment.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative seeks comment by Oct. 28 to help prepare its annual National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, including on telecom issues, USTR said in Wednesday's Federal Register. The report spells out the “most important” foreign trade barriers affecting U.S. goods trade, foreign direct investment and intellectual property rights protections. USTR aims to use the report to dismantle those barriers in future trade negotiations, said the agency. The office said it will review trade deals on U.S. telecom products and services to see if any trade laws, policies or practices with countries with which America has trade or telecom deals deny this country's firms "mutually advantageous market opportunities for telecommunications products and services." Comment via www.regulations.gov, docket number USTR 2015-0014. USTR released the last National Trade Estimate Report in March.

FTC Commissioner Julie Brill wants U.S. policy to embrace more of a privacy rights philosophy akin to Europe's, she said at a Technology Policy Institute conference in Aspen, Colorado, this week. Europe sees privacy as a “fundamental right,” not just connected with protection from the government, as the U.S.’s Fourth Amendment speaks to, she said. The U.S. has fundamentally a “harm-based approach” to privacy enforcement, she said. “Frankly, I would like to see more emphasis on the rights side,” Brill said. “There’s more that we can do, whether it’s enacting a consumer privacy bill of rights or whether it’s implementing some more protections around, for instance, data brokers or student privacy.” Andrea Glorioso, counselor for the digital economy at the delegation of the EU to the U.S., is “not convinced” of such “deep-rooted differences” between the U.S. and Europe and cited a bigger gap between them and other “large” countries. “It’s very important that we keep the channels of communication open,” he said. Brill agreed that there is more in common ultimately and said “openings” exist across the Atlantic. “I see a ... new European Commission, that is trying to deal with some legacy issues, particularly around safe harbor, and they’re working very hard to get over the end line,” she said, anticipating there are consumer protection issues where the EU can cooperate with U.S. down the road. Brill cited the governments of countries in Europe, including in Germany, where there’s “an effort to really gain much more of a nuanced perspective when it comes to things like the Internet of Things, when it comes to big data, when it comes to privacy.” Google Public Policy Director Adam Kovacevich “would suggest there is a global playbook” on these issues emerging, he said on the same panel. But there is “global creep of ideas that are not in that playbook” in areas such as Latin America and Asia Pacific, he said. “'Right to be forgotten’ I think we’d put in that category,” he said, referring to discussion of it within Mexico and worries of the possibility there that it could be “abused by elites trying to withhold information from ordinary citizens.” Brill cited encouraging signs on data interoperability. “The Europeans really do want to solve the safe harbor problem,” she said, citing other interoperability mechanisms under development. “I’m not sure I’ll see the trans-Atlantic interoperable mechanism converging with the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Corp.] one, the one governing the Asian and Pacific economic areas. I think they’ll be different but I do think there will be flows that will be able to occur as a result of both mechanisms. And binding corporate rules may actually end up being one of the lynchpins between the two.”

The Chinese government has “increasingly pursued policies” to obstruct U.S. industry access to the Chinese information and communications technology (ICT) sector over the past nine months, said 19 associations in a recent letter to President Barack Obama. BSA | The Software Alliance, CEA, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Information Technology Industry Council, Semiconductor Industry Association, Telecommunications Industry Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others urged Obama to pressure Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease those barriers during a bilateral September summit in Washington. Chinese national security policy, as well as other motivations, have led to “a new program to acquire or indigenize U.S. semiconductor technology,” “new restrictions on cross-border data flows” and several other restrictive measures, said the Aug. 11 letter. “The United States and China should reaffirm their commitment to open markets, particularly in the ICT sector, recognizing the significant benefits that both countries enjoy from integration into global ICT industry value chains.” The groups want other ways to strengthen cooperation among the two countries. The letter said China adopted the restrictive measures since Jinping's last visit to Washington in November 2014.