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Content type: Examples
The UK government, in collaboration with universities, water companies, and public research bodies, is preparing to launch a national research programme to develop an early warning system for future waves of COVID-19 by detecting the coronavirus in sewage. About half of those infected with SARS-CoV-2 excrete it in their faeces, and enough virus survive to be detectable in untreated water using ultrasensitive PCR analysis. Teams in the UK, several other European countries, Australia, Israel, and…
Content type: Examples
An Ipsos MORI survey conducted on May 20-22 found generally high levels of compliance with lockdown restrictions, though many were suffering. While roughly three-quarters were confident they could download and operate a contact tracing app and would be willing to comply with its recommendations, only 40% were confident or fairly confident that they could trust the government to protect their and other people's data, and only 42% were confident or fairly confident that the app could help limit…
Content type: Video
A quick catch-up on the state of play of apps round the world - though we end up mostly discussing India and the UK - and we celebrate a very special birthday.
You can find a much deeper and more detailed look at the various questions and concerns around coronavirus apps on our website: https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3792/covid-contact-tracing-apps-are-complicated-mess-what-you-need-know and all the latest news in our tracker https://privacyinternational.org/examples/tracking-…
Content type: Report
It is common for families with no recourse to public funds who attempt to access support from local authorities to have their social media monitored as part of a 'Child in Need' assessment. This practice appears to be part of a proactive strategy on the part of local authorities to discredit vulnerable families in order to refuse support. In our experience, information on social media accounts is often wildly misinterpreted by local authorities who make serious and unfounded allegations…
Content type: Examples
In a technical analysis of the UK NHSx contact tracing app for iOS, security engineers find that Apple's Bluetooth design makes it harder to detect iPhones running the app in background mode, and the app is using "keepalive" notifications in order to keep the app able to make the necessary connections. The researchers believe this workaround will work sufficiently well for users in populated areas. The app appears to abide by the privacy safeguards listed in the paper released by the National…
Content type: Examples
Six weeks after British prime minister Boris Johnson imposed a lockdown, many workers in non-essential jobs across many sectors of the economy were nonetheless being forced to continue working in potentially dangerous situations such as call centres, offices, factories, warehouses, and English construction sites as cleaners, security guards, warehouse workers, and office staff. It was left up to their bosses to decide whether or not they could work from home. The government's own statistics…
Content type: Examples
At a cost to itself of £88,000 a week in salaries alone, Palantir has committed 45 engineers to a government data project intended to help predict surges in demand for the NHS during the pandemic. The company will be paid £1 a week for its work. Besides Palantir's work supporting the US Immigration Customs and Enforcement, a major concern is vendor lock-in that may make it difficult for NHSx to extract the insights Palantir helps it develop and move elsewhere.
https://tech.newstatesman.com/…
Content type: Examples
More than 3 million people in the UK have downloaded the JoinZoe COVID Symptom Tracker, which was designed by doctors and scientists at King's College London, Guys and St Thomas' Hospitals working in partnership with the health science company ZOE Global Ltd and endorsed by governments and NHS in Scotland and Wales, and supported by numerous UK health charities. The app asks for some basic information, including an email address, after which it asks you to check in once a day to say whether you…
Content type: Examples
To speed up daily temperature checks, Amazon has installed thermal cameras to screen workers for coronavirus symptoms in its warehouses around the world. Cases of COVID-19 have been reported at more than 50 of the company's US warehouses. Thermal cameras will also replace thermometers at staff entrances to many of Amazon's Whole Foods stores. Workers have claimed it is almost impossible to socially distance inside the warehouses.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52356177
Writer:…
Content type: Examples
NHS England is using Yoti's digital ID card solution to verify health care workers' identity; the cards are added to staff phones, enbaling them to use a contactless ID app to prove their identity both online and offline. Yoti is providing the system for free for three months to all public health organisations, emergency services, and community initiatives working to contain the pandemic.
Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202004/uk-national-health-service-rolls-out-yotis-biometric-…
Content type: Examples
The risk detection company Dataminr has created an AI system that analyses social media posts to predict the next hotspots for COVID-19 outbreaks. The company claims it successfully predicted spikes seven to 13 days before they occurred - in the UK, in London, Hertfordshire, Essex, and Kent, and in 14 US states. Rather than measuring aggregated data, the system looks for unique posts from individuals who say they have symptoms, have tested positive, or been exposed, as well as first-hand…
Content type: Examples
To help the UK's Department for Work and Pensions handle the more than half a million applications the department received in the last two weeks of March, the identity verification company Nomidio, a subsidiary of Post-Quantum, is offering its service free of charge. The service would enable a simple, server-based three-step verification process through a smartphone to help first-time users prove their identity.
Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202003/free-palm-and-face-biometrics-…
Content type: Examples
British biometric start-ups are helping the UK government create digital passports.
VST Enterprises is providing a biometrics-backed digital health care passport, V-COVID, to help critical NHS and emergency services workers get back to work; the passport will incorporate test results and be included in an app that can be scanned from two meters away. In combination, Patchwork Health, which provides NHS trusts with a digital platform and Truu, which provides a digital staff passport,…
Content type: Examples
In early April, police in a UK park violated their own social distancing guidelines to order ITN journalist Michael Segalov to go home when he began filming the same police appearing to harass a distressed woman. Segalov's solicitors at ITN followed up by filing a letter of complaint demanding an investigation and a public apology.
Source: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/epgegj/police-power-trip-coronavirus-lockdown
Writer: Simon Childs
Publication: Vice
Content type: Examples
Palantir and the British AI start-up Faculty are data-mining large volumes of confidential UK patient information to consolidate government databases and build predictive computer models under contract to NHSx, the digital transformation arm of the UK's National Health Service. NHSx said the goal is to give ministers and officials real-time information to show where demand is rising and equipment needs to be deployed, and that the companies involved do not control the data and are not allowed…
Content type: Examples
On March 20, the UK's Department of Health and Social Care published a notice providing legal backing for the NHS to set aside the duty of patient confidentiality as part of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As long as it is to fight the coronavirus, NHS organisations and GPs may share whatever patient data they deem necessary.
Source: https://twitter.com/halhod/status/1245297265054367744/photo/1
Writer: Hal Hodson
Publication: Twitter
Content type: Examples
The UK's Home Office has granted police in England new powers to enforce lockdown rules for six months, to be reviewed every three weeks. The police can now: order people to disperse or leave an area; ensure parents are doing all they can to top their children from breaking the rules; issue a £60 fine, lowered to £30 if paid within 14 days; and issue a £120 fine for second-time offenders, to double on each further repeat offence. Non-payers can be taken to court, where magistrates can impose…
Content type: Examples
The Northamptonshire Police reported a surge in calls from people reporting their neighbours for exercising more than once a day, holding barbecues in their back yards, or failing to cough into a tissue. Nick Adderley said his officers will issue penalty notices if necessary, but thought it important to first educate the public.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-52052830
Writer: BBC
Publication: BBC
Content type: Examples
Biometrics companies are offering free services to essential businesses, remote workforces, and government agencies administering benefits claims during the coronavirus pandemic. Among them are Redrock Biometrics, which is waiving its licence fee for palm print recognition for essential businesses; Daon, which is offering free access to its multi-factor biometrics-based authentication platform, "IdentityX", to all new customers; PrivyID is offering a month of free digital signature service to…
Content type: Examples
The UK's National Health Service is collaborating with Palantir to launch a data platform that will track the movement of critical staff and materials; it will, for the first time, give ministers a dashboard showing the first-ever comprehensive view of the entire health care system. The data Palantir gathers into a data store from across the health sector will not include individual patient data; instead, it will include A&E capacity, calls to the NHS 111 hotline, and the number and…
Content type: Examples
After the British government announced a national lockdown, Derbyshire Police used drones to capture footage of people rambling, walking their dogs, and taking photos in the Peak District. The move was widely criticised as heavy-handed and counter-productive; however, the government followed up by saying that people should stay near their homes for exercise and not travel unnecessarily and granting police new powers to enforce the lockdown.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-…
Content type: Examples
The Local Government Association has argued that councils should not have to comply with freedom of information requests during the coronavirus crisis. Greater Manchester police followed suit, saying that police in non-critical roles were being reallocated to operational policing and would not answer FOI requests "until further notice".
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/mar/23/uk-coronavirus-live-news-latest-boris-johnson-minister-condemns-people-ignoring-two-metre-…
Content type: Examples
On March 14 a group of immigrant advocacy groups wrote to the government asking for the Home Office to release all 1,500 to 2,000 detainees in order to protect them from a coronavirus outbreak in the UK's seven removal centres and two short-term holding centres.. On March 21, the Home Office said it had released 300 of the detainees. The charity Detention Action launched a legal action to compel the Home Office to release the most vulnerable detainees and test all detainees. The Home Office…
Content type: Examples
Researchers at the University of Oxford are working with the UK government on an app similar to the smartphone tracking system China developed to alert people who have come in contact with someone infected with the coronavirus. The British app, which would be associated with the country's National Health Service,, would rely on the public volunteering to share their location data out of a sense of civic duty rather than, as in China, compulsion. The service would not publish the movements of…
Content type: Examples
UK: O2 shares aggregated location data with government to test compliance with distancing guidelines
Mobile network operator O2 is providing aggregated data to the UK government to analyse anonymous smartphone location data in order to show people are following the country's social distancing guidelines, particularly in London, which to date accounts for about 40% of the UK's confirmed cases and 30% of deaths. The project is not designed to monitor individuals. Lessons from the impact on London of travel restrictions could then be applied in the rest of the country. The government says it has…
Content type: Examples
BT, owner of UK mobile operator EE, is in talks with the government about using its phone location and usage data to monitor whether coronavirus limitation measures such as asking the public to stay at home are working. The information EE supplies would be delayed by 12 to 24 hours, and would provide the ability to create movement maps that show patterns. The data could also feed into health services' decisions, and make it possible to send health alerts to the public in specific locations.…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the last few days, PI and its Network have been recording and documenting the measures being proposed by various governments, international institutions and companies to help contain the spread of Covid-19.
In a recent development, the Guardian have reported that the UK government is the latest to seek to use mobile phone location and other traffic data from telecommunication operators to help with measures the government may develop next as part of the response to Covid-19.
It comes…
Content type: Examples
The coronavirus action plan announced on March 3, alongside many measures for managing the NHS in the crisis, will also allow the Investigatory Powers Commissioner to appoint judicial commissioners (JCs) on a temporary basis in the event that there are insufficient JCs available to operate the system under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The Home Secretary, at the request of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, will also be allowed to vary the time allowed for urgent warrants to be…
Content type: Examples
A new surveillance system to detect cases of COVID-19 in England was established by Public Health England (PHE) and the NHS to strengthen existing systems and to prepare for and prevent wider transmission of the virus. Some NHS hospitals have been asked to take part in the plan, which involves testing samples from patients with severe respiratory infections who do not meet the current definition for COVID-19 in intensive care units (ICU) and Severe Respiratory Failure (ECMO) Centres. …
Content type: Case Study
Every one of us has an expectation to be legally protected in the same way, to have access to the same human rights, and to be able to defend those rights in court.
However, for trans and non-binary people, this has not always been the case – and in many places around the world it still isn’t the case. The lack of legal recognition for their gender has had significant consequences.
If the law does not recognise you as the person that you are and treats you as someone you are not then you…