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Content Type: News & Analysis
Friday, December 1, 2017
13 June 2016
"State capacity to conduct surveillance may depend on the extent to which business enterprises cooperate with or resist such surveillance” notes the Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression in his report on the role of the private sector to respect human rights in the digital age. The Special Rapporteur will present its findings and recommendations to the Human Rights Council on Thursday.
It is no longer sufficient for companies to simply point the finger at intelligence and…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Monday, February 2, 2015
Late last year, the newly-elected government of Indonesia began to take steps which are almost unheard of today: reforming government communications surveillance powers.
The much-needed development, on the back of the victory of President Joko Widodo, comes at a critical moment in the country's history as the relationships that Indonesians have with technology are changing and growing rapidly. A recent poll revealed that Indonesians consider technology to have had a mostly negative impact on…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
This post was written by Chair Emeritus of PI’s Board of Trustees, Anna Fielder.
The UK Data Protection Bill is currently making its way through the genteel debates of the House of Lords. We at Privacy International welcome its stated intent to provide a holistic regime for the protection of personal information and to set the “gold standard on data protection”. To make that promise a reality, one of the commitments in this government’s ‘statement of intent’ was to enhance people’s enforcement…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Thursday, August 23, 2018
This month Brazil adopted a new data protection law, joining the ranks of more than 120 countries which have adopted such legislation, providing individuals with rights against the exploitation of their personal data. But after a veto from the Brazilian president, the law lacks an independent authority in charge of its application, which can severely undermine its impact.
When drafting data protection bills, one of the most important and often politically contentious issue tends to be their…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Yesterday, Amazon announced that they will be putting a one-year suspension on sales of its facial recognition software Rekognition to law enforcement. While Amazon’s move should be welcomed as a step towards sanctioning company opportunism at the expense of our fundamental freedoms, there is still a lot to be done.
The announcement speaks of just a one-year ban. What is Amazon exactly expecting to change within that one year? Is one year enough to make the technology to not discriminate…
Content Type: Report
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Back in October 2019, PI started investigating advertisers who uploaded personal data to Facebook for targeted advertising purposes. We decided to take a look at "Advertisers Who Uploaded a Contact List With Your Information", a set of information that Facebook provides to users about advertisers who upload files containing their personal data (including unique identifier such as phone numbers, emails etc...). Looking at the limited and often inaccurate information provided by…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Privacy shouldn’t be a luxury.
Google claim to agree with us - we know that because Sundar Pichai, their CEO, said so this May in the New York Times. And yet, Google are enabling an ecosystem that exploits people who own low-cost phones.
Today we, along with over 50 organisations including Amnesty International, DuckDuckGo, and the ACLU are asking Google to step up, and we’re asking you to join us in pressuring them to do the right thing.
Sign the petition
Google has the power to…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Sunday, July 7, 2013
The following excerpt is from a posting in the Guardian's Comment is Free by Carly Nyst, Privacy International's Head of International Advocacy.
"In order to challenge a secret surveillance system, and to demand the government explains why it is spying on British citizens, one must apply to a secret tribunal that does not make public its proceedings or the reasons for its decision. It may seem like an Orwellian fantasy, but this is the stark reality of the British legal system.
It's called…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Thursday, April 6, 2017
This week the United States Congress voted to strip away one of the country’s few safeguards of the right to privacy by repealing rules which would have limited internet service provider’s ability to use or share customers’ data without customers’ approval.
Meanwhile, last week, 6,500 kilometers away in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council called on states to strengthen customers’ control over their data and develop legislation to address harm from the sale or corporate sharing of…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Friday, June 2, 2017
Image source: AFP
Earlier this month, the Kenyan daily The Star reported that UK-based data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica had been quietly contracted by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s party in a bid to win himself a second term in office. State House officials were quick to deny the claims, while the company itself issued no comment.
Cambridge Analytica has exploded onto the scene following revelations that its psychometric profiling techniques were used and reportedly played a role in both…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Privacy International, Bytes for All and other human rights groups are celebrating a major victory against the Five Eyes today as the UK surveillance tribunal rules that GCHQ acted unlawfully in accessing millions of private communications collected by the NSA up until December 2014.
Today’s judgement represents a monumental leap forward in efforts to make intelligence agencies such as GCHQ and NSA accountable to the millions of individuals whose privacy they have violated.
The case was…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Friday, December 1, 2017
Early on Wednesday morning the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill was approved by Pakistan’s National Assembly. The Bill, which is almost universally acknowledged as “controversial” had been criticised by opposition members, industry and civil society at numerous stages. Civil society organisations from around the world released two joint statements in April and December last year expressing their concerns. Despite the chorus of criticism, very little has changed in the Bill during its…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Traduction réalisée par Nadine Blum.
Le 29 mai, le Congrès nigérien a voté une loi permettant au gouvernement d’intercepter largement certaines communications électroniques. La loi rend légale l’interception de communications, autorisée par le gouvernement, sans protections appropriées ni mécanismes de contrôle.
La loi a été adoptée avec 104 votes pour – le Parlement nigérien compte 171 membres – et sans la participation de l’opposition qui a boycotté la loi. L’opposition a affirmé que la loi…
Content Type: Press release
Friday, November 1, 2013
General Assembly Should Pass Strong Resolution on the Right to Privacy in the Digital Age
(New York, November 21, 2013) – The United Nations General Assembly should approve a new resolution and make clear that indiscriminate surveillance is never consistent with the right to privacy, five human rights organizations said in a November 21, 2013 letter to members of the United Nations General Assembly.
After heated negotiations, the draft resolution on digital privacy initiated by Brazil and …
Content Type: Press release
Thursday, July 23, 2015
In yet another blow to the UK’s surveillance proponents, the UN Human Rights Committee has criticised the British legal regime governing the interception of communications, observing that it allows for mass surveillance and lacks sufficient safeguards.
The latest in a series of calls for wholesale reform of surveillance laws and practices in Britain, and following on the footsteps of reports by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation David Anderson QC and Royal United Services…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Thursday, March 31, 2016
This week the UN Human Rights Committee has issued recommendations to the Governments of Namibia, New Zealand, Rwanda, South Africa, and Sweden to reform and strengthen surveillance and privacy protections.
The Committee recommendations touch upon some of the fundamental issues of surveillance powers and the right to privacy, including mass surveillance, retention of communication data, judicial authorisation, transparency, oversight, and regulating intelligence sharing.
These recommendations…
Content Type: Press release
Monday, November 21, 2016
Caroline Wilson Palow, General Counsel at Privacy International
“The passage of the Investigatory Powers Act is a major blow to the privacy of people in the UK and all over the world. It sets a world-leading precedent, but not one of which the Government should be proud. Instead of reining in the unregulated mass surveillance practices that have for years been conducted in secret and with questionable legal authority, the IPA now enshrines them in law. Widespread surveillance is an antithesis…
Content Type: Press release
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
The British Government has admitted its intelligence services have the broad power to hack into personal phones, computers, and communications networks, and claims they are legally justified to hack anyone, anywhere in the world, even if the target is not a threat to national security nor suspected of any crime.
These startling admissions come from a government court document published today by Privacy International. The document was filed by the government in response to two court cases …
Content Type: Press release
Friday, March 14, 2003
A conference held today at the London School of Economics will hear new statistics showing that UK law enforcement and investigation agencies are demanding an unprecedented quantity of customer records from communications providers.
Privacy International has compiled figures based on estimates supplied by the Home Office, Ministerial statements, legal experts, the communications industry and the All Party Internet Group of MPs. The figures being released today indicate that police and other…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Privacy International (PI) welcomes today's report from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) into three credit reference agencies (CRAs) which also operate as data brokers for direct marketing purposes. As a result, the ICO has ordered the credit reference agency Experian to make fundamental changes to how it handles people's personal data within its offline direct marketing services.
It is a long overdue enforcement action against Experian.
Read our Q&A on the report here.…
Content Type: Press release
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Governments must accept they have lost the debate over the legitimacy of mass surveillance and reform their oversight of intelligence gathering, Privacy International and Amnesty International said today in a briefing published two years after Edward Snowden blew the lid on US and UK intelligence agencies’ international spying network.
“The balance of power is beginning to shift,” said Edward Snowden in an article published today in newspapers around the world. “With each court victory, with…
Content Type: Long Read
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Six years after NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents providing details about how states' mass surveillance programmes function, two states – the UK and South Africa – publicly admit using bulk interception capabilities.
Both governments have been conducting bulk interception of internet traffic by tapping undersea fibre optic cables landing in the UK and South Africa respectively in secret for years.
Both admissions came during and as a result of legal proceedings brought by Privacy…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Friday, June 30, 2017
The Privacy International Network recently submitted joint stakeholder reports for seven partner countries - India, South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Brazil, the Philippines and Indonesia - as part of the 27th session of the Universal Periodic Review (1 to 12 May 2017).
Communications surveillance was a major area of concern, as we observed that these policies and practices remain largely opaque, complex and vague. In some countries, they fail to meet human rights standards and principles of…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
3 June 2014
The following article written by Carly Nyst, Privacy International's Legal Director, originially appeared on the Future Tense blog on Slate:
The news that the CIA is no longer using vaccination programs as a front for spying operations may come as a relief to many humanitarian workers. Yet their fears should not be completely assuaged, because the CIA’s activities—which undoubtedly threatened the safety of humanitarian workers and those they seek to help—pale in comparison to the…
Content Type: Long Read
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
As Privacy International celebrates Friday's victory against Britain’s security services - the first such victory this century - we cannot help but feel the success is bittersweet.
After all, we may have convinced the Investigatory Powers Tribunal that GCHQ was acting unlawfully in accessing NSA databases filled with billions of emails and messages, but with a few technical adjustments the intelligence services have managed to insure themselves against any further challenge, at least in…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
On 29 May, Niger’s Congress voted on a law allowing for broad interception powers of certain electronic communications by the government. The bill makes it lawful for the government to approve the interception of communications without appropriate safeguards or oversight mechanisms.
The law passed with 104 votes – the Nigerien parliament has 171 members – without the participation of the opposition that boycotted the law. The opposition claimed that
the law will allow those, for whose…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Friday, December 1, 2017
7 July 2017
War profiteers are finding the data business easy going. The have wielded their unwarranted influence and applied their business model of causing and then profiting from insecurity and applied it to the digital age; the results have been more profit for them and less liberty for you.
When a politician riles against an evil tech giant for providing ‘safe spaces’ online, it’s a political distraction. The real battle for your data is being fought between the emergent tech giants and…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Today, Privacy International, along with nine other NGOs including Liberty and Amnesty International, attended a hearing before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to revisit the Court's first ruling on our case challenging UK mass surveillance and intelligence sharing. In September 2018, the First Section of the ECtHR ruled that the UK government's mass interception program violates the rights to privacy and freedom of expression. Notwithstanding the positve aspects…
Content Type: Long Read
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
It was a quiet evening in Agadez, a bustling Saharan city in the centre of Niger. Thirty-five year old Agali Ahmed was sipping tea at a friend’s place, as he often did, when he received a message: police were at his uncle’s house. When he got there, Ahmed saw men in plainclothes, standing around the building’s gate. Inside, more men were searching the apartment. Three white men, who Ahmed guessed were Spanish, asked for his phone and started taking pictures of him. They told him to follow them…
Content Type: Long Read
Friday, June 26, 2020
What Do We Know?
In late March, the NHS quietly announced that it would give technology businesses access to unprecedented quantities of patient data for processing and analysis in response to COVID-19. One of those businesses is CIA-backed Palantir Technologies. Palantir’s software is allegedly “mission critical” to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) mass raids, detentions, and deportations. Despite trusting Palantir with patient data, the NHS has been tight-lipped about the scope…