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A case that reached the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights analysing the UK’s mass interception program, first exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, relating to people’s rights to privacy and freedom of expression. 

Mass surveillance can subject a population or significant component thereof to indiscriminate monitoring, involving a systematic interference with people’s right to privacy and all the rights that privacy enables, including the freedom to express yourself and to protest.

Privacy International filed an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court challenging law enforcement access to personal data stored abroad

Privacy International intervened in the case of Nemanja Popovic v. Austria in the European Court of Human Rights. Our submission focused on the safeguards that should apply to data sharing, and its use in criminal proceedings, in the context of intelligence and law enforcement sharing.

The United Nations have initiated a process to negotiate an international treaty on cybercrime (more specifically, a comprehensive international convention on countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes). An open-ended, ad hoc intergovernmental committee of experts (Ad Hoc Committee) was established to conduct the negotiations which are expected to continue until at least the end of 2023. The Ad Hoc Committee shall convene at least six sessions, of 10 days each, to commence in January 2022, as well as a concluding session in New York, and conclude its work in order to provide a draft convention to the General Assembly at its seventy-eighth session (i.e. in 2024).

PI believes that cybercrime can pose a threat to the enjoyment of human rights. At the same time, we are concerned that cybercrime laws, policies and practices are currently being used to undermine human rights. This is why we are actively participating in the UN negotiations to ensure that any proposed cybercrime treaty includes human rights safeguards applicable to both its substantive and procedural provisions.