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Content type: News & Analysis
Picture: Christian Schnettelker
1. The process of applying for social benefits subjects people to humiliating and punishing scrutiny. It is gruelling and harmful in and of itself. It requires people to invest significant time and resources, and to disclose vast amounts of personal information. For example, people may be required to turn over troves of personal documents (such as documents that show people’s financial status, housing, income, family structure, and identity), provide biometric…
Content type: News & Analysis
On Tuesday, Twitter disclosed that it may have shared data on users with advertising partners, even if they have opted out from personalised ads, and shown people ads based on inferences made about the devices they use without permission. According to Twitter, the issue was fixed on Monday, even though it is not yet clear how many users have been affected.
This is not the first time that Twitter had to admit that it leaked user data to advertisers. In May 2019, the social…
Content type: Long Read
Image credit: Emil Sjöblom [ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)]
Prepaid SIM card use and mandatory SIM card registration laws are especially widespread in countries in Africa: these two factors can allow for a more pervasive system of mass surveillance of people who can access prepaid SIM cards, as well as exclusion from important civic spaces, social networks, and education and health care for people who cannot.
Mandatory SIM card registration laws require that people provide personal…
Content type: Explainer
Recently the role of social media and search platforms in political campaigning and elections has come under scrutiny. Concerns range from the spread of disinformation, to profiling of users without their knowledge, to micro-targeting of users with tailored messages, to interference by foreign entities, and more. Significant attention has been paid to the transparency of political ads - what are companies doing to provide their users globally with meaningful transparency into how they…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International provided comments to the UK Financial Conduct Authority on the Terms of Reference to its Credit Information Market Study.
We highlighted that:
Credit data (whether ‘traditional’ credit data; data from Open Banking sources, or other sources of data like social media) are hugely revealing of people’s lives far beyond the state of their financial affairs.
The affects upon consumer behaviour of this use of data in the credit sector extends beyond the choices they…
Content type: Advocacy
Dear Chair and Committee colleagues,
Privacy International is an international NGO, based in London, which works with partners around the world to challenge state and corporate surveillance and data exploitation. As part of our work, we have a dedicated programme “Defending Democracy and Dissent” where we advocate for limits on data exploitation throughout the electoral cycle.
We have been closely following the important work of the Committee. Prompted by the additional evidence provided…
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: Advocacy
On 26 July 2019, Privacy International sent the attached written evidence submission to the UK All Parliamentary Party Group on Electoral Campaigning Transparency.
In the UK, All-Party Groups (APPGs) are informal groups of Members of both the House of Commons and House of Lords with a common interest in particular issues.
Content type: Advocacy
As an organisation that has been fighting to protect people's data and privacy since the 1990s, we were left speechless by your redemption of Cambridge Analytica’s former staff ("What Cambridge Analytica’s ex-staff can teach us about data defence”, Gillan Tett, July 24, 2019).
How can we prevent a repeat of the Cambridge Analytica scandal?, Tett asks, yet fails to even mention the core solution that is universally proposed by privacy professionals around the world: comprehensive…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International has joined over 30 organisations working with migrants and refugees to write to the newly appointed British Home Secretary to raise a number of pressing issues, which require action if the immigration and asylum system is to regain the trust of the public.
The letter below was sent to the Home Secretary on Wednesday, 30 July 2019.
Find out more about PI’s work to demand a more humane approach to immigration based on the principles of fairness, accessibility, and respect…
Content type: Advocacy
Today, we have responded to the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s online platforms and digital advertising market study
In the last year, Privacy International has conducted research into the ad tech and the data brokers industry exposing and complaining about their exploitation of personal data and the lack of transparency of their activities.
Based on our research and analysis of the current trends, Privacy International provided observations on the three broad potential sources of…
Content type: News & Analysis
Picture Credit: US AID
US President Trump has been cutting aid to Central America, including a surprise cut of approximately $500m in aid to the “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, apparently as punishment for “doing absolutely nothing” to prevent emigration to the US.
What remains of the funds is largely and deliberately being repurposed for spending on the US’s own security interests: indeed, one area which his…
Content type: News & Analysis
Foto: US AID
El presidente estadounidense Trump ha estado recortando la ayuda a Centroamérica, incluyendo un recorte sorpresivo de aproximadamente 500 millones de dólares a los países del “Triángulo del Norte” (El Salvador, Guatemala y Honduras), al parecer como castigo por “no haber hecho absolutamente nada” para impedir la emigración hacia los Estados Unidos.
Los fondos restantes están siendo reorientados,en su gran mayoría y deliberadamente, al gasto para…
Content type: Long Read
image from portal gda (cc)
Many people are still confused by what is 5G and what it means for them. With cities like London, New York or San Francisco now plastered with ads, talks about national security, and the deployment of 5G protocols being treated like an arms race, what happens to our privacy and security?
5G is the next generation of mobile networks, which is meant to be an evolution of the current 4G protocols that mobile providers have deployed over the last decade, and there are…
Content type: Examples
Le Monde exposed anti-IVG (anti-abortion) advertising on Facebook as part of a borader campaign led by anti-abortion website IVG.net. The advertisement relied on stock photos and fake testimonies posted in public Facebook groups and promoted to young women. Most of the posts attempt to promote the idea that abortion leads to mental health issues, a fact that has been proved to be falacious.
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2018/07/11/les-anti-ivg-ciblent-les-jeunes-femmes-grace-aux…
Content type: Examples
French website IVG.net, first Google result when typing IVG (Interuption Volontaire de Grossesse or abortion in french), has been exposed as being anti-abortion website spreading misinformation. Offering an official looking "Numero vert" (free to call phone number number), IVG.net attempts to convince pregnant women calling the service that abortion is a high risk operation which will have terrible impact on their health and personal life, pressuring women to not undertake such operation. The…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International and Open Rights Group welcome the Competition and Market Authority (CMA)’s call for information on digital mergers. In this submission, the organisations provide their observations on some of the questions raised in this consultation, focussing on: the ways in which digital products or services are monetized though user data and advertising; questioning the assumption that users pay products or services with personal data; providing examples of…
Content type: Long Read
Photo by David Werbrouck on Unsplash
This is an ongoing series about the ways in which those searching for abortion information and procedures are being traced and tracked online. This work is part of a broader programme of work aimed at safeguarding the dignity of people by challenging current power dynamics, and redefining our relationship with governments, companies, and within our own communities. As an enabling right, privacy plays an important role in supporting the exercise of…
Content type: News & Analysis
While people may think that providing their photos and data is a small price to pay for the entertainment FaceApp offers, the app raises concerns about privacy, manipulation, and data exploitation—although these concerns are not necessarily unique to FaceApp.According to FaceApp's terms of use and privacy policy, people are giving FaceApp "a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license" to use or publish the…
Content type: Long Read
By Valentina Pavel, PI Mozilla-Ford Fellow, 2018-2019
Our digital environment is changing, fast. Nobody knows exactly what it’ll look like in five to ten years’ time, but we know that how we produce and share our data will change where we end up. We have to decide how to protect, enhance, and preserve our rights in a world where technology is everywhere and data is generated by every action. Key battles will be fought over who can access our data and how they may use it. It’s time to take…
Content type: Advocacy
Democratic engagement is increasingly mediated by digital technology. Whether through the use of social media platforms for political campaigning, biometric registration of voters and e-voting, police monitoring of political rallies and demonstrations using facial recognition, and other surveillance methods, technology is now infused into the political process.
These technologies rely on collecting, storing, and analysing personal information to operate. Much recent debate around…
Content type: News & Analysis
This blogpost is a preview of the full 'Our Data Future' story, produced by Valentina Pavel, PI Mozilla-Ford Fellow, 2018-2019.
2030.
Four worlds.
One choice. Which one is yours?
All aboard! Time to step into the imaginarium. Explore four speculative future scenarios, examining how different ways of governing data create vastly different worlds. How is our digital environment going to look like in ten years' time? What’s going to be our relationship with data?
Each of us has a role in…
Content type: Advocacy
During its 98th session, from 23 April to 10 May 2019, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) initiated the drafting process of general recommendation n° 36 on preventing and combatting racial profiling.
As part of this process, CERD invited stakeholders, including States, UN and regional human rights mechanisms, UN organisations or specialised agencies, National Human Rights Institutions, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), research…
Content type: Examples
In 2009, Amazon Kindle readers were surprised to find that their copies of George Orwell’s 1984 was missing from their devices. Amazon had remotely deleted these copies after it found out from the publisher that the third-party vendor selling them did not own the rights to the books. Amazon refunded the cost of the books but told its readers who were affected that they could no longer read the books and that the titles were “no longer available for purchase.” This was not the first time that…
Content type: Examples
From 2014 to early 2017, Amazon used an artificial intelligence (AI) hiring tool to review prospective employees’ resumes and select qualified candidates, based on Amazon’s previous hiring decisions from a ten-year period; however, the tool was much more effective at simply selecting male candidates, rather than the most qualified candidates, because Amazon had hired predominantly male candidates in the past. The hiring tool learned to discriminate against resumes that included the word “women’…
Content type: Examples
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) used Rekognition, Amazon’s facial recognition software, to compare images of US lawmakers to a publicly available database of 25,000 mugshot photos. The ACLU’s study validated research that has shown that facial recognition technology is more likely to produce false matches for women and people with darker skin. Amazon’s software misidentified 28 lawmakers as being the people in mugshots, and these false matches were disproportionately of members of…
Content type: Examples
More than 450 Amazon employees delivered a letter to Jeff Bezos and other Amazon executives, demanding that the company immediately stop selling facial recognition software to law enforcement, sever connections to companies like Palantir that help immigration authorities track and deport immigrants, and provide greater employee oversight when making ethical decisions. The employees protested against Amazon allowing its technologies to be used for mass surveillance and abused by those in power,…
Content type: Examples
Amazon shareholders rejected two non-binding proposals governing its facial recognition software, Rekognition: one would have limited sales of Rekognition to governments, unless a board determined that such sales would not violate peoples’ rights, and the other was to study the extent to which Rekognition infringed peoples’ privacy and other rights. These two proposals were presented to shareholders despite Amazon’s effort to stop the votes, which were thwarted by the US Securities and Exchange…