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Content type: Examples
In response to a case brought by three Italian trade unions, a court in Palermo has ruled that the points system used by the Italian food delivery service Foodinho discriminates against disabled and older riders, as well as those with special family or personal circumstances. A subsidiary of Spain's Glovo Group, Foodinho's system awards higher scores to riders who complete more deliveries or are available at peak times; high scores give riders greater choice and better work opportunities. …
Content type: Examples
Foodinho, the Italian food delivery subsidiary of the Spanish company Glovo, continues to accumulate millions of euros in fines for infringements of labour law such as collecting and misusing riders' data. New research studying Glovo's app indicates that the company appears to have created its own hidden scoring system so evaluate couriers' performance, and shares personally identified riders' after-hours location with Google and other unauthorised third-party trackers.https://algorithmwatch.…
Content type: Report
The methodology employed for this report consists primarily of in-depth interviews held with grassroots political workers and representatives of collectives. The researchers interviewed 14 individuals from various social justice causes such as womens’ rights, climate change, transgender rights, students’ rights and the right to universal internet access in Pakistan. The experiences they have shared with the interviewers along with the real-time developments in the country’s law and order…
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: News & Analysis
Privacy International (PI) is concerned by developments in Pakistan regarding the enactment of the Draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023 and the opaque process which will see the bill become law.
The Bill was published on 19 May 2023 by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication ('MITT'). However no open and inclusive consultation was open for comments to be submitted to the MITT. In a concerning development it was reported that the Bill was approved by the Federal…
Content type: Examples
Amid a chaotic rollout of the national vaccination plan, the Italian Federation of General Practitioners (FIMMG) and some regions in Italy are resorting to algorithms to more efficiently prioritise who gets vaccinated against COVID-19.
AlgorithmWatch documented the adoption of automated decision-making (ADM) systems to determine COVID-19 vaccination priority orders both by the Italian Federation of General Practitioners and by regional authorities in Lombardy, Valle d’Aosta, and Piedmont. More…
Content type: Case Study
Como is one of the most advanced cities in Italy in the use of facial recognition technology (FRT). An investigation for the Italian Wired magazine published in June 2020 exposed how the system had been bought, installed and tested for months with little transparency and despite the lack of a clear legal framework.
The investigation was entirely based on tools available to everyone, such as Freedom of Information requests (FOI requests. Similar to PI’s campaign 'Unmasking policing, inc', it…
Content type: Examples
TrustNet Pakistan, the country’s only digital trust foundation, has begun work alongside many other global technology companies on a digital vaccination verification platform called CovidCreds. The initiative supports projects that use privacy-preserving verifiable credentials. TrustNet is working on a solution called Vaccify to provide verification that it’s safe for people to travel out of Pakistan. The system is expected to work via a mobile phone app that can digitally receive test results…
Content type: Examples
In late May, shortly before Italian domestic travel was set to reopen, Stefano Bonaccini, the governor of Emilia-Romagna, called Sardinia’s proposed health passports “unmanageable”, although Sicily and some other southern regions popular among tourists were also in favour of using them to ensure that the virus did not spread from hard-hit northern areas such as Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, and Lombardy. Bonaccini also objected to characterising some regions as virus spreaders.
https://www.ansa.it/…
Content type: Examples
In April, as the crisis in Italy began to ease, some Italian health officials and politicians, among them Luca Zaia, the regional president of the northeastern region of Veneto, began to propose a “Covid Pass” that would Italians who have antibodies showing they have had and recovered from the coronavirus to exit the lockdown and go back to work. Veneto, adjacent to the hardest-hit area, Lombardy, planned to begin collecting 100,000 blood samples from people across the region for the purpose of…
Content type: Examples
A detailed analysis of Pakistan’s app, which was developed by the Ministry of IT and Telecom and the National Information Technology Board and which offers dashboards for each province and state, self-assessment tools, and popup hygiene reminders, finds a number of security issues. Among them: the app uses hard-coded credentials, which it sends insecurely, to communicate with the government server, and it downloads the exact coordinates of infected people in order to provide a map of their…
Content type: Examples
The lack of data protection laws and the absence of a privacy commission are contributing factors to Pakistan’s failure to investigate or remedy security flaws in the country’s recently-launched COVID-19 tracking technology, which partially depends on a system originally developed to combat terrorism. While there are no reported cases of harassment or targeting based on the leak online of the personal details of thousands of COVID-19 volunteers, the lack of response fails to boost citizens’…
Content type: Examples
Italy has launched Immuni, one of the first contact tracing apps based on the Apple-Google API. The app is opt-in, and includes an explanation of the privacy and security measures in its setup. The app collects anonymously bluetooth tokens that are automatically randomised, but does not collect GPS or location data and performs all processing on the device.
Source: https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/01/italy-apple-exposure-notification-api-app/
Writer: Michael Potuck
Publication: 9 to 5 Mac
Content type: Examples
As the first confirmed coronavirus case in Pakistan, Yahyah Jaffery became a pariah after his identity, photograph, and home address were leaked on social media. Similar leaks about dozens of other patients and medical staff followed. The contact tracing system being used for coronavirus was originally developed by the country's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) to combat terrorism; it is based on a new data hub in Islamabad that will collect information from the ISI tracking system and share…
Content type: Examples
Our partners from Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan wrote a piece analysing cases of privacy violations, misinformation, hate speech and other cases. As they said, the situation with regards to the Coronavirus is still developing in the country and Digital Rights Foundation, are keeping an eye out for the developments regarding the disease and also assessing how the digital rights sphere is being affected.
Link: https://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/protecting-your-digital-rights-during-the-…
Content type: Examples
The Pakistani government has repurposed a system designed by the country's spy agency, inter-Services Intelligence for tracking down terrorists to trace suspected COVID-19 cases. Prime minister Imran Khan has said that efficient tracking and testing of coronavirus-infected people is the only way to reopen the country's closed businesses.
Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/pakistan-government-isi-system-track-suspected-covid-19-cases-pm-imran-khan-1670378-2020-04-24
Writer: Press…
Content type: Examples
An Excel file containing complete data pertaining to patients tested for coronavirus in the cities Quetta and Taftan in the the Balochistan region of Pakistan has been circulating in WhatsApp groups about Balochistan. The file contains information such as names, phone numbers, age address and other identifying information for the patients. The leaked data puts the patients at risk of personal harm and social stigma, even after recovery. Balochistan government officials say the data leaked…
Content type: Examples
An official directive from the Pakistani provincial government of Sindh titled "COVID-19 Mobile Registration System for Needy People" describes its use of multiple databases to identify those in need of welfare funds and disburse cash to them by combining taxpayers' data from the Federal Board of Revenue, travel histories from the Federal Investigation Agency, and financial information from the State Bank of Pakistan. Recipients need to create cellphone accounts via the service provider Jazz in…
Content type: Examples
Mobile phone users in Pakistan have discovered that the government is accessing, without consent, their mobile phone location and call records despite legal questions about whether doing so violates the country's constitution. After users reported that patients testing positive for COVID-19 returned home, the government sent SMS "Karuna Alert" messages to some of their friends, family, and neighbours; the Pakistan Telecom Authority confirmed it had sent the messages using patients' registered…
Content type: Examples
Using mobile phone data to verify the movements of their owners, the Italian region of Lombardy found that between February 20, when the first COVID-19 case was discovered, and March 10, movement by its 2 million inhabitants dropped by just under 60%. Lombardy has also used cell phone data, obtained from the telecommunications companies and transferred to the ISI Foundation for a public impact research project, to monitor how many people move around the district. Because of privacy laws, the…
Content type: Examples
The surveillance tool supplier Cy4Gate is pitching surveillance tools to track every citizen and their contacts to multiple governments around the world, including their own. In a demonstration of the system, Governments using the system, which Cy4Gate calls "Human Interaction Tracking System (HITS), would track mobile phone users' location via GPS, cellphone tower data, and Bluetooth. Cy4Gateis ready to offer the system for free to Italian authorities, and pitched it publicly on Twitter in…
Content type: Examples
After Pakistani residents queried whether messages labelled "CoronaALERT" sent out via SMS were legitimate, telecom authorities confirmed that it was authentic, being sent to selected individuals at the request of the Ministry of Health under the Digital Parkistan programme. Individuals were chosen because they might have come in contact with infected individuals during travel or in specific locations. It is not clear, however, what the criteria were for selecting individuals at risk,…
Content type: Examples
In a statement, Vodafone said it is "producing an aggregated and anonymous heat map for the Lombardy region in Italy to help the authorities to better understand population movements in order to help thwart the spread of COVID-19." The company offered to help governments develop insights based on large anonymised datasets wherever technically possible, and legally permissible, Vodafone will be willing to assist governments in developing insights based on large anonymised data sets.
Source:…
Content type: Examples
A task force at the Italian Ministry of Innovation, in collaboration with the University of Pavia to leverage big data technologies to deal with COVID-19, after the WHO advised governments that lockdowns alone are not enough, and that testing, isolation, and contact tracing are crucial. The effort is beginning with anonymised data provided by Facebook; Italian telcos including Tim, Vodafone, Wind Tre, and FastWeb, via their Asstel trade association, have also offered anonymous datasets…
Content type: Examples
A task force at the Italian Ministry of Innovation, in collaboration with the University of Pavia to leverage big data technologies to deal with COVID-19, after the WHO advised governments that lockdowns alone are not enough, and that testing, isolation, and contact tracing are crucial. The effort is beginning with anonymised data provided by Facebook; Italian telcos including Tim, Vodafone, Wind Tre, and FastWeb, via their Asstel trade association, have also offered anonymous datasets…
Content type: Examples
In November 2018, Italy's Data Protection Authority advised against a proposal from the country's Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, to replace "parent 1 and parent 2" on children's national ID cards with "mother and father". Salvini, who campaigned for election earlier in 2018 on a socially conservative platform, also called for gender-specific terms throughout the application and for applications submitted on behalf of under-14s to include permission from both parents. The DPA argued that the…
Content type: Case Study
Photo by Roger H. Goun
Chloe is an investigative journalist working for an international broadcast service; we will call the TV show she works for The Inquirer. She travels around the world to work with local journalists on uncovering stories that make the headlines: from human trafficking to drug cartels and government corruption. While her documentaries are watched by many and inspire change in the countries she works in, you would not know who Chloe is if we were to tell you her real name.…
Content type: Key Resources
Political campaigns, debate and engagement has become increasingly digitalised in Italy. Here are some examples of concerns this has raised.
Content type: Examples
On April 16th 2019, Italy’s antitrust authority said that it had launched a probe into five Amazon companies for possible abuse of dominant market position in e-commerce and logistical services. The companies being looked into include Amazon Services Europe, Amazon Europe Core, Amazon EU, Amazon Italia Services, and Amazon Italia Logistica. In comments sent via e-mail, Amazon said “We are fully cooperating with the Authority.” The Authority said the probe would be wrapped up by April 15th, 2020…
Content type: News & Analysis
The first half of 2018 saw two major privacy moments: in March, the Facebook/ Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, followed in May by the EU General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") taking effect. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, as it has become known, grabbed the attention and outrage of the media, the public, parliamentarians and regulators around the world - demonstrating that yes, people do care about violations of their privacy and abuse of power. This scandal has been one of…