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Content type: Long Read
18th December is International Migrants Day. It’s a day designated by the United Nations, dedicated to recognising the “important contribution of migrants while highlighting the challenges they face.”On this day we wish to recognise in particular the countless human rights violations that people experience at borders and within hostile immigration systems. We thank those who survive these violations for sharing with us and others their experiences of such violations, and for accepting to…
Content type: Explainer
The Free to Protest Guide Pakistan has been created by adapting Privacy International's (PI) Free to Protest Guide UK according to the laws and policies of Pakistan, in collaboration with PI and local activists in Pakistan.The Guide has been published in English, Urdu, Punjabi and Pashto.DISCLAIMER: This guide forms part of PI's global work to highlight the range of surveillance tools that law enforcement can use in the protest context, and how data protection laws can help guarantee…
Content type: Examples
The call centre company Teleperformance, which employs about 380,000 people in 34 countries providing customer service for dozens of major UK companies and government departments, has told some non-UK staff that AI-powered webcams will be installed in their homes to watch for infractions of company rules while they work. Workers will have to click to indicate they're taking a break if they leave their desks and provide a reason. They will also be warned that stopping keyboard and mouse activity…
Content type: Examples
A new report from Worker Info Exchange finds that drivers working for Just Eat have had their accounts abruptly de-activated by automated systems for alleged overpayments as small as £1.35, which many are contesting. Just Eat says that the overpayments were triggered because drivers had incorrectly recorded themselves waiting for an order when their GPS coordinates did not show them at the restaurant. In several cases, the GPS data however showed that they remained within a couple of minutes’…
Content type: Examples
A survey commissioned by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office finds that a fifth of UK adults believe they have been monitored by an employer. Timekeeping and access were most commonly tracked, followed by emails, files, calls, or messages. Seventy percent said they would find such monitoring intrusive. Studies say that excessive tracking is associated with higher staff turnover rates and can be counterproductive. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/02/uk-adults-monitored-by-…
Content type: Examples
Four French trade unions representing drivers signed an agreement with ride-hailing platforms to provide drivers with a minimum income and provide greater transparency regarding suspending and terminating drivers. Platforms must now give drivers a chance to respond before deactivating their accounts and must provide compensation based on previous income if an account's suspension proves unjustified. https://www.bfmtv.com/economie/entreprises/vtc-nouvel-accord-entre-plateformes-et-syndicats…
Content type: Examples
Despite being a subscription service that doesn't depend on advertising revenue, Slack (owned by Salesforce) collects a large amount of data on the people who use its system, including details provided voluntarily at sign-up, when and how people use the platform, and information about third-party services users connect to it - and never deletes any of it. Users newly added to a channel can read the entire range of historical messages and files. Messages users send are controlled by the…
Content type: Examples
Human raters have played a significant role in the rapid improvement in the machine learning models that fuel modern AI. The raters evaluate the algorithmic output of search engines and AI chatbots and provide "Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback" (RLHF) – the technical name for the deployment of such ratings to improve AI models. The efforts of these workers, who are mostly located in the global South but include thousands in the US, is downplayed by the technology companies to whom…
Content type: Examples
In two cases brought by Worker Info Exchange and the App Drivers and Couriers Union on behalf of drivers, the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam has upheld a 2021 ruling in a lower court that under the GDPR Uber and Ola Cabs must disclose the personal information and profiling that the companies use to create "fraud probability scores" and "earnings profiles" to workers. These scores and profiles are in turn used in automated decision making to allocate work and pay rates. The court rejected the…
Content type: Examples
A large-scale preprint study of more than 100 million rides between 2018 and 2019 in Chicago, where a 2020 law requires ride-hailing apps to disclose fares, finds that the dynamic pricing algorithms used by ride-hailing companies such as Lyft, Uber, and Via are socially biased. The finding is in line with earlier studies by other organisations such as the Princeton Review that found bias in algorithmic pricing. The researchers found that prices for rides varied according to the average…
Content type: Advocacy
In August 2023, the UK Westminster Women and Equalities Committee launched a call for evidence into a short inquiry on women’s reproductive health.We submitted a response highlighting the increasing management of women’s reproductive healthcare through digital health initiatives. We raised concerns that these technologies can be privacy-invasive and result in highly sensitive personal information being shared in unexpected and potentially dangerous ways. We encouraged the Committee to ensure…
Content type: Examples
An eight-country study of Amazon employees has found that 57% say the company's performance monitoring system damages their mental health, 51% (65.7% of drivers) say it's had a negative effect on their physical health, and 59% feel the monitoring is excessive. In addition, 58% say Amazon doesn't explain clearly how it uses the data it collects on workers. Injury rates at Amazon warehouses are above the industry average.https://uniglobalunion.org/news/globalsurvey23/Publication: UNI Global…
Content type: Examples
Workers in Amazon warehouses are tracked closely by a system that records every minute of "time off task" via the radio frequency handheld scanners workers use to track customer packages. Breaching strict time off task time limits can get an employee fired. Time off task includes bathroom breaks, talking to other Amazon employees, or going to the wrong floor of a warehouse: - managers may be required to ask offenders to account for each missing minute. https://www.vice.com/en/article/…
Content type: Examples
AI-powered cameras made by the startup Netradyne and used in Amazon's delivery vans incorrectly penalises drivers for events beyond their control or which do not constitute unsafe driving such as if they are cut off by another vehicle. The data collected by the cameras is sent to Amazon, which uses the information to evaluate drivers' performance by assigning them with a score for safe driving. https://www.vice.com/en/article/88npjv/amazons-ai-cameras-are-punishing-drivers-for-mistakes-…
Content type: Examples
A BBC Panorama investigation that brought hidden cameras into a UK-based Amazon warehouse found that workers walked up to 11 miles in a shift and had just 33 seconds on average to find each product, following instructions from a handset. Experts on stress at work say the warehouse conditions are ideal for increasing the risk of mental and physical illness.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25034598Publication: BBCPublication date: 2013-11-25Writer: BBC
Content type: Examples
Humans who review footage of warehouse workers flagged by Amazon’s AI computer vision system to check for employee errors - are themselves surveilled in detail to ensure they make punishing targets. The workers, who are paid as little as £212 a month to review thousands of images and videos per day, report physical problems, deteriorating eyesight, and cognitive exhaustion. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-11-21/the-eyes-of-amazon-a-hidden-workforce-driving-a-vast-…
Content type: Examples
The San Francisco-based company Emotiv claims its MN8 electroencephalography device can be worn comfortably for a full workday. The device monitors an employee's brainwaves with the goal of creating safer, more efficient workplaces by monitoring workers' brain signals for signs of stress or distraction. Company president and neuroscientist Oliver Oullier says the data the device collects makes it possible to reschedule tasks and working hours to lessen stress and increase focus. Emotiv says all…
Content type: Examples
JP Morgan Chase's hundreds of thousands of employees are monitored in detail throughout their working day with the collected data sent to the data management system Workforce Activity Data Utility, which the company began building shortly before the coronavirus pandemic started. Some employees say it is not clear to them why the bank tracks how much time they spend on Zoom calls or writing emails or how this data will be used to assess their performance. They say that fears around how the data…
Content type: Examples
Delivery drivers in Jakarta use GPS-spoofing apps in order to improve their chances of selection by the Gojek delivery and transport app, an equivalent to Apple Pay, Postmates, Venmo, and Uber all in one. Gojek that operates in more than 200 cities in Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand. Other grey market apps enlarge details of orders that are too small to read, automate bidding, and apply filters to open orders. Some apps are distributed via Google Play; more are sold via driver…
Content type: Examples
Content moderators working in the south Asian IT hub Hyderabad say their work reviewing still and video images of sexual and violent content is straining their mental health. Paid less than £8 a day, the moderators say the wellness coaches the company supplies do little beyond moving them to a less sensitive queue until they feel better. In some cases, managers tell the moderators to leave up content they'd rather remove, such as animal killings. Humans are needed for this work; AI is…
Content type: Video
LinksCompanies getting disciplinedOvulation Tracking App Premom Will be Barred from Sharing Health Data for Advertising Under Proposed FTC Order Facebook getting fined for data exploitation in NorwayCNIL fines CriteoCNIL fines DoctissimoWorldcoin (aspires to be World ID) has been getting some pushback from some countriesGovernments abandoning plans, or at least held to accountKenya drops Huduma Numba and replaces it with new systems (it’s not any better and advocacy under way) but it’s…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International joined civil society efforts to call the South African Parliament not to approve the draft General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill 2023 (GILAB), which was approved by the Cabinet and introduced in Parliament.
The Bill was proposed by the South African government, after the Constitutional Court found the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act of 2002 (RICA) unconstitutional on multiple grounds.
The draft Bill fails to meet the human rights standards on many…
Content type: Long Read
Our world is undergoing a seismic process of increasing digitisation, which sees the proliferation of new technologies and the growing integration of these technologies into public services, which rely more and more on copious amounts of personal data and on automated processes. This phenomenon has a unique impact upon the rights of persons with disabilities. As the era of global digitisation causes societies worldwide to undergo a digital metamorphosis, persons with…
Content type: Examples
Police in Western Australia have demanded that ABC hand over all the footage of climate protesters it collected in preparing a programme ("Four Corners") about them. More than 40 civil society groups have opposed the request, saying that the demand undermines press freedom and urging the broadcaster to protect its journalists' sources. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/05/wa-police-order-abc-to-hand-over-four-corners-footage-of-woodside-protest?cid=…
Content type: Examples
Myanmar's ruling junta has begun a pilot census in 20 townships across the country, and has said that a national census needs to be completed in 2024 before new elections take place, which could be in 2025. Critics warn that the census will be used to increase surveillance of opponents, including protesting civil servants, doctors, and teachers. Myanmar also intends to roll out an electronic identification system and has asked China for help in designing it.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-…
Content type: Examples
The Israeli government is bringing forward a bill that would permit the police to place facial recognition cameras in public places, including at events such as protests, as long as a police officer is convinced that the cameras' operation does not present undue invasion of any individual's privacy and the purpose is to prevent, thwart, or detect serious crimes, locate missing persons, and enforce restraining orders or bans. The bill is based on another pending bill that is meant to cover a…
Content type: Examples
The Taliban could repurpose a plan devised by the Americans before their 2021 departure for a four-year programme to create a large-scale camera network to surveil Afghan cities, The capital, Kabul, already has thousands of cameras. The Taliban administration has also consulted with Huawei about potential cooperation. Rights groups are concerned the technology will be used to crack down on protesters and some analysts question the regime's ability to pay for the programme, but records of…
Content type: Examples
Based on a facial recognition match, the New York City Police Department sent more than 50 officers to besiege the home of a racial justice organiser, claiming he had shouted in an officer's ear at a protest in the summer of 2020. The officers were unable to produce a warrant when asked, but deployed snipers, drones, helicopters, and police dogs. The organiser, Derrick Ingram, has filed a lawsuit.https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/facial-recognition-technology-police-…