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Content Type: Long Read
18th December is International Migrants Day, a day to recognize both the contributions and continued struggles of migrants across the world.Migrants continue to face an increased level of human rights violations through hostile immigration policies and practices. At borders and beyond, their fundamental human rights and dignity are being violated through old and new technologies. These systems in place reinforce the dehumanising rhetoric of migrants, who are merely seeking asylum and a better…
Content Type: Long Read
18th December is International Migrants Day. It’s a day designated by the United Nations, dedicated to recognising the “important contribution of migrants while highlighting the challenges they face.”On this day we wish to recognise in particular the countless human rights violations that people experience at borders and within hostile immigration systems. We thank those who survive these violations for sharing with us and others their experiences of such violations, and for accepting to…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Earlier this week, the UK Government announced that no immigration status checks will be carried out for migrants trying to register with their GP and get vaccinated. But temporary offers of safety are not enough to undo the decades of harm caused by policies that have embedded immigration controls into public services.
Years of charging migrants for healthcare and sharing patient data with the Home Office has eroded trust between migrant communities and the NHS. As a result, they might not…
Content Type: Long Read
An edited version of this article was originally published on the EDRi website in September 2020.
Introduction
Monopolies, mergers and acquisitions, anti-trust laws. These may seem like tangential or irrelevant issues for privacy and digital rights organisations. But having run our first public petition opposing a big tech merger, we wanted to set out why we think this is an important frontier for people's rights across Europe and indeed across the world.
In June, Google notified the…
Content Type: News & Analysis
In the last few weeks, the UK government has announced various new measures to ensure that crossings across the Channel were “inviable” including by appointing a new role of “clandestine Channel threat commander" and further plans to deploy the navy to stop migrants from crossing to the UK from France across the Channel. Premature plans it seems, as not only would such measures be contrary to the UK’s international obligations to allow individuals to seek asylum in the UK, but also since such…
Content Type: Call to Action
Google wants to know everything about you.
It already holds a massive trove of data about you, but by announcing its plans to acquire the health and fitness tracker company Fitbit, it now clearly wants to get its hands on your health too. We don’t think any company should be allowed to accumulate this much intimate information about you. This is why we’re trying to stop its merger with Fitbit.
Google and Fitbit need the European Commission’s approval before they can merge. The merger would…
Content Type: Advocacy
Privacy International (PI), Fundaciòn Datos Protegidos, Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D) and Statewatch responded to the call for submission of the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance on how digital technologies deployed in the context of border enforcement and administration reproduce, reinforce, and compound racial discrimination.
This submission provides information on specific digital technologies in service of border…
Content Type: Long Read
There are few places in the world where an individual is as vulnerable as at the border of a foreign country.As migration continues to be high on the social and political agenda, Western countries are increasingly adopting an approach that criminalises people at the border. Asylum seekers are often targeted with intrusive surveillance technologies and afforded only limited rights (including in relation to data protection), often having the effect of being treated as “guilty until proven…
Content Type: Press release
On 15 June 2020, Google formally notified the European Commission of its proposed acquisition of Fitbit, enabling them to capture a massive trove of sensitive health data that will expand and entrench its digital dominance. Privacy International is calling on EU regulators to block the merger.
In November 2019, Google announced its plan to acquire Fitbit, a company that produces and sells health tracking technologies and wearables - including smartwatches, health trackers and smart scales -…
Content Type: Long Read
Today, migrant communities in the UK already face multiple well-documented obstacles in accessing healthcare, not least because of charges to access the National Health Service (NHS), as it is the case for non-EU migrants, and legitimate fears of data-sharing between the NHS and the Home Office.
In the current pandemic, in addition to these concerns, asylum-seekers face an impossible choice: risk exposure to coronavirus, or be unable to apply for asylum.
Individuals seeking…
Content Type: Long Read
Photo by Cade Roberts on Unsplash
For those of you who don't spend the most productive part of your day scanning the news for developments about data and competition, here's what has been going on in the UK since summer 2019.
Basically, the UK competition authority started an investigation into online platforms and digital advertising last summer, and issued their preliminary findings in December 2019, concluding that Facebook and Google are very powerful in the search engine and social media…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Amid calls from international organisations and civil society urging for measures to protect the migrant populations in Greece and elsewhere, last week, the European Commission submitted a draft proposal to amend the general budget 2020 in order to, among other measures, provide assistance to Greece in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Both at the Turkish-Greek border and in the camps on the Greek islands, there are severe concerns not only about the dire situation in which these people…