Advanced Search
Content Type: Video
Given everything that's happening at the moment around the world, we've decided to postpone our episode on ID in Kenya until next week.
You can listen and subscribe to the podcast where ever you normally find your podcasts:
Spotify
Apple podcasts
Google podcasts
Castbox
Overcast
Pocket Casts
Peertube
Youtube
Stitcher
And more...
Some of the resources we mentioned in the episode can be found here:
ACLU: know your rights: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/protesters-…
Content Type: Advocacy
Last week, Privacy International joined more than 30 UK charities in a letter addressed to the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, following his recent declaration, asking him to lift No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) restrictions.
Since 2012, a ‘NRPF condition’ has been imposed on all migrants granted the legal right to live and work in the UK. They are required to pay taxes, but they are not permitted to access the public safety net funded by those taxes.
This is not a topic we are known…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This week International Health Day was marked amidst a global pandemic which has impacted every region in the world. And it gives us a chance to reflect on how tech companies, governments, and international agencies are responding to Covid-19 through the use of data and tech.
All of them have been announcing measures to help contain or respond to the spread of the virus; but too many allow for unprecedented levels of data exploitation with unclear benefits, and raising so many red flags…
Content Type: Advocacy
This stakeholder report is a submission by Privacy International (PI), the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders Kenya (NCHRD-K), The Kenya Legal & Ethical Issues Network on HIV and AIDS (KELIN), and Paradigm Initiative.
PI, NCHRD-K, KELIN, and Paradigm Initiative wish to bring their concerns about the protection and promotion of the right to privacy, and other rights and freedoms that privacy supports, for consideration in Kenya’s upcoming review at the 35th session of the Working…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The global counter-terrorism agenda is driven by a group of powerful governments and industry with a vested political and economic interest in pushing for security solutions that increasingly rely on surveillance technologies at the expenses of human rights.
To facilitate the adoption of these measures, a plethora of bodies, groups and networks of governments and other interested private stakeholders develop norms, standards and ‘good practices’ which often end up becoming hard national laws…
Content Type: Advocacy
Privacy International's submission to the consultation initiated by the UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights on the impact on human rights of the proliferation of “soft law” instruments and related standard-setting initiatives and processes in the counter-terrorism context.
In this submission Privacy International notes its concerns that some of this “soft law” instruments have negative implications on the right to privacy leading to violations of other human…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Image: The Great Hack publicity still, courtesy of Netflix.
This is a review of the documentary 'The Great Hack' originally published on IMDb.
This documentary is a fascinating account of The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
In early 2018, Cambridge Analytica became a household name. The company had exploited the personal data of millions of Facebook users, without their knowledge or consent, and used it for political propaganda.
At a running time of almost two hours, The Great…
Content Type: Examples
The Lumi by Pampers nappies will track a child's urine (not bowel movements) and comes with an app that helps you "Track just about everything". The activity sensor that is placed on the nappy also tracks a baby's sleep.
Concerns over security and privacy have been raised, given baby monitors can be susceptible to hackers and any app that holds personal information could potentially expose that information.
Experts say the concept could be helpful to some parents but that there…
Content Type: Case Study
This time, Amtis travels to year 2030 to get a sense of how the data rights framework played out:
I just moved into a new apartment and everything was a mess. My stuff was all over the place and I couldn't find anything. I received a notification on my dashboard that a delivery drone had arrived with my package.
Data rights dashboard
The dashboard showed me a summary report with information about how my data was handled: which company processed my order, the type of data that was collected…
Content Type: Case Study
In this third leap to 2030, Amtis sees that people have created national data funds where citizens and governments together own the data that is being generated by sensors or by the services people use.
Here’s how Amtis lives this time:
Smart commuto-mobile
In the busiest parts of the city there are no more cars. There are only special lanes for drones, houndopacks – fast robots that run like dogs to deliver packages, and smart commuto-mobiles – slim electric booths where you can sit on your…
Content Type: Case Study
In this next leap to year 2030, Amtis lives the life of a data labourer, being paid wages for data inputs. Here’s how Amtis begins the story:
I am in my green pyjamas, but I can’t say for sure if it’s morning or evening. My eyes are red from staring at screens. I am discouraged and very tired. Of course, all these emotions and reactions are registered by my Playbour – my pocket-sized smart console that has basically become my entire life. It’s my connection to family, friends and the world; my…
Content Type: Video
Watch our video primer (1m54s) on how political advertisers use highly detailed data about you to target political adverts at you.
Read about some simple steps you can take to minimise the amount of political ads you see online and questions you can be asking of those that profit from your data.
Content Type: Examples
In August 2017, it was reported that a researcher scraped videos of transgender Youtubers documenting their transition process without informing them or asking their permission, as part of an attempt to train artificial intelligence facial recognition software to be able to identify transgender people after they have transitioned.
These videos were primarily of transgender people sharing the progress and results of hormone replacement therapy, including video diaries and time-lapse videos. The…
Content Type: Video
In April 2019 Ukraine held presidential elections. We were in Kyiv to hear about people's experience monitoring online disinformation – a big issue in this election. Activists in Ukraine have long experience navigating the noisy and chaotic environment that disinformation creates – which comes not only from Russia, but also from domestic politicians and others with money and power.
At PI, we’re working to make sure that the way data is used by political actors and…
Content Type: Examples
In January 2019, Facebook announced that as of February 28 the site would add more information to that displayed when users click on the "Why am I seeing this?" button that appears next to ads on the service. Along with the brand that paid for the ad, some of the biographical details they'd targeted, and whether they'd uploaded the user's contact information, Facebook would also show when the contact information was uploaded, whether it was by the brand or one of their partners, and when access…
Content Type: Video
Video courtesy of CPDP (https://www.cpdpconferences.org/)
What is the impact of online gender-based violence on survivors? What should be the role of companies in fighting this phenomenon? What is the link between the right to privacy? In this panel, which took place at CPDP in February 2019, academics, civil society and government representatives discuss the issue of online gender based violence with a privacy lens.
Chair: Gloria González Fuster, VUB -LSTS (BE)
Moderator: Valerie…
Content Type: News & Analysis
In December 2018, we revealed how some of the most widely used apps in the Google Play Store automatically send personal data to Facebook the moment they are launched. That happens even if you don't have a Facebook account or are logged out of the Facebook platform (watch our talk at the Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in Leipzig or read our full legal analysis here).
Today, we have some good news for you: we retested all the apps from our report and it seems as if we…
Content Type: Examples
In August 2018, banks and merchants had begun tracking the physical movements users make with input devices - keyboard, mouse, finger swipes - to aid in blocking automated attacks and suspicious transactions. In some cases, however, sites are amassing tens of millions of identifying "behavioural biometrics" profiles. Users can't tell when the data is being collected. With passwords and other personal information used to secure financial accounts under constant threat from data breaches, this…
Content Type: Examples
Cookies and other tracking mechanisms are enabling advertisers to manipulate consumers in new ways. For $29, The Spinner will provide a seemingly innocent link containing an embedded cookie that will allow the buyer to deliver targeted content to their chosen recipient. The service advertises packages aimed at men seeking to influence their partners to initiate sex, people trying to encourage disliked colleagues to seek new jobs, and teens trying to get their parents to get a dog. However,…
Content Type: Examples
In October 2018, researcher Johannes Eichstaedt led a project to study how the words people use on social media reflect their underlying psychological state. Working with 1,200 patients at a Philadelphia emergency department, 114 of whom had a depression diagnosis, Eichstaedt's group studied their EMRs and up to seven years of their Facebook posts. Matching every person with a depressive diagnosis with five who did not, to mimic the distribution of depression in the population at large, from…
Content Type: Examples
In 2017, Britain's' two biggest supermarkets, Tesco and Sainsbury's, which jointly cover 45% of the UK's grocery market, announced they would offer discounts on car and home insurance based on customers' shopping habits. For example, based on data from its Nectar card loyalty scheme, Sainsbury's associates reliable, predictable patterns of visits to stores with safer and more cautious driving, and therefore offers those individuals cheaper insurance. For some products, Sainsbury's also mines…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, based on an analysis of 270,000 purchases between October 2015 and December 2016 on a German ecommerce site that sells furniture on credit, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research found that variables such as the type of device could be used to estimate the likelihood that a purchaser would default. The difference in rates of default between users of iOS and Android was about the same as the difference between a median FICO credit score and the 80th percentile of FICO…
Content Type: Examples
In June 2018, Uber filed a US patent application for technology intended to help the company identify drunk riders by comparing data from new ride requests to past requests made by the same user. Conclusions drawn from data such as the number of typos or the angle at which the rider is holding the phone would determine which, if any, driver they were matched with. What plans the company may have for the technology is unknown; however, critics expressed concerns that it could deter prospective…
Content Type: Examples
In a 2018 interview, the Stanford professor of organisational behaviour Michal Kosinski discussed his research, which included a controversial and widely debunked 2017 study claiming that his algorithms could distinguish gay and straight faces; a 2013 study of 58,000 people that explored the relationship between Facebook Likes and psychological and demographic characteristics; and the myPersonality project, which collected data on 6 million people via a personality quiz that went viral on…
Content Type: Examples
In 2018, a Duke University medical doctor who worked with Microsoft researchers to analyse millions of Bing user searches found links between some computer users' physical behaviours - tremors while using a mouse, repeated queries, and average scrolling speed - and Parkinson's disease. The hope was to be able to diagnose conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's earlier and more accurately. Other such studies tracked participants via a weekly online health survey, mouse usage, and, via…
Content Type: Examples
In 2017, the Massachusetts attorney general's office reached an agreement under which Boston-based Copley Advertising agreed to eschew sending mobile ads to patients visiting Planned Parenthood and other health clinics. In 2015, Copley's geofencing technique used location information from smartphones and other internet-enabled devices to target "abortion-minded" women and send them ads for alternatives to abortion in a campaign it conducted on behalf of a Christian pregnancy counselling and…
Content Type: Examples
In 2011, the US Department of Homeland Security funded research into a virtual border agent kiosk called AVATAR, for Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time, and tested it at the US-Mexico border on low-risk travellers who volunteered to participate. In the following years, the system was also tested by Canada's Border Services Agency in 2016 and the EU border agency Frontex in 2014. The research team behind the system, which included the University of Arizona, claimed the…
Content Type: Long Read
Written jointly by Privacy International and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
In a landmark decision earlier this month, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that one of the mass surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden violates the rights to privacy and freedom of expression. While the case challenges the U.K. government’s mass interception of internet traffic transiting its borders, the court’s judgment has broader implications for mass spying programs in Europe and…
Content Type: Examples
In July 2014, a study conducted by Adam D. I. Kramer (Facebook), Jamie E. Guillory, and Jeffrey T. Hancock (both Cornell University) and published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences alerted Facebook users to the fact that for one week in 2012 689,003 of them had been the subjects of research into "emotional contagion". In the study, the researchers changed randomly selected users' newsfeeds to be more positive or negative to study whether those users then displayed a more…
