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Content type: News & Analysis
Today we launch the public consultation process for the International Principles on Communications Surveillance and Human Rights. From now until January 3rd, we are inviting comments and suggestions on the draft principles.
The rationale behind these principles is to provide civil society, industry and government with a framework against which to evaluate whether current or proposed surveillance laws and practices are consistent with human rights. Now more than ever, we need greater…
Content type: News & Analysis
Communications surveillance is one of the most significant threats to personal privacy posed by the state. This is why many statements of fundamental rights across the world give special regard to the privacy of communications. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 12:
No one should be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks on his honour or reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of…
Content type: News & Analysis
On the surface, it’s all about protecting Russian kids from internet pedophiles. In reality, the Kremlin’s new “Single Register” of banned websites, which goes into effect today, will wind up blocking all kinds of online political speech. And, thanks to the spread of new internet-monitoring technologies, the Register could well become a tool for spying on millions of Russians.
Signed into law by Vladimir Putin on July 28, the internet-filtering measure contains a single, innocuous-sounding…
Content type: News & Analysis
Tuesday’s letter to Google CEO Larry Page, personally signed by 29 European data protection authorities, ordered the corporation (inter alia) to give users greater control over their personal information. The notions of trust and control are emphasised throughout the letter, and Google is urged to "…develop new tools to give users more control over their personal data" and "collect explicit consent for the combination of data for certain purposes". It is good news that the…
Content type: News & Analysis
Anonymous proxy service HideMyAss.com - "a leading online privacy website" according to its own homepage - today admitted handing over user logs to law enforcement agencies.
We commend companies running privacy-protecting services. We need more like them. But we also need them to keep their word. Their website claims "Our free web proxy is a secure service that allows you to surf anonymously online in complete privacy" and their pro paid-for version promises that users can "…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the PI office, we have daily debates about which platforms to use for our organizational operations. As a privacy charity, we are naturally concerned about the integrity of our own information services and resources, but we frequently receive queries about the best technologies to use from a variety of other organizations, some with very complex threat models.
The sad fact is that we are all poorly served by the range of services currently available. We worry that there is a significant…
Content type: News & Analysis
Governments have no automatic right of access to our communications. This will sound highly controversial to some, even downright radical. But the demands of national security and crime prevention do not, in fact, immediately trump every other right and responsibility in the complex relationship between citizen and state.
The recent Skype argument is a great example. Skype has always prided itself on being a secure method of communication. Businesses, government agencies, human…
Content type: News & Analysis
Mass surveillance affects us all
The draft Communications Data Bill - known as the 'Snoopers' Charter' - will dramatically expand police surveillance powers if it is voted into law. Innocent citizens would have all their communications and online activity monitored, all of the time. The government would store information about who we're texting, what we're searching for on Google and who we're friends with on Facebook. Police and HM Revenue and Customs officers would be able to access this…
Content type: Press release
The government today published a draft version of a bill that, if signed into law in its current form, would force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mobile phone network providers in Britain to install 'black boxes' in order to collect and store information on everyone's internet and phone activity, and give the police the ability to self-authorise access to this information. However, the Home Office failed to explain whether or not companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter will be…
Content type: News & Analysis
What do we know?
Very little. The Communication Capabilities Development Programme (CCDP) is going to be included the Queen's Speech next month and we still haven't had public confirmation of the details. What we do know is that there have been secret briefings to MPs designed to scare them into compliance, and secret briefings to industry that were originally designed to calm their fears (but in fact have only served to increase their outrage).
What was previously proposed?
In 2009 the Home…
Content type: Press release
An internal Liberal Democrat briefing on Home Office plans to massively expand government surveillance was today passed to Privacy International. The document contains significant evasions and distortions about the proposed 'Communications Capabilities Development Programme' (CCDP), and is clearly intended to persuade unconvinced Lib Dem MPs to vote in favour of the proposal.
The document contains a section entitled 'Remember, under Labour' consisting of a list of the previous government's…
Content type: News & Analysis
For the past 18 months, I've been investigating the export of surveillance technologies from Western countries to despotic regimes, but I never thought I'd see a democratic government proposing to install the kind of mass surveillance system favoured by Al-Assad, Mubarak and Gaddafi. Yet the Home Office's latest plans would allow the authorities unprecedented levels of access to the entire population's phone records, emails, browsing history and activity on social networking sites,…
Content type: News & Analysis
Earlier this week it was announced that UK-based Datasift would start offering their customers the ability to mine Twitter’s past two years of tweets for market research purposes. The licensing fees will add another revenue stream to Twitter's portfolio - but at what cost to the company's reputation? Twitter, once the darling of the privacy world, seems to have lost its way.
Datasift don't believe that there are any privacy implications to their new service. In fact, they didn't…
Content type: News & Analysis
Last month, within thirty seconds of the BBC publishing a quotation from me on the latest round of the nymwars and Google+, my phone rang. Caller ID indicated that it was someone I know who works at Google. "Had I said something wrong?" was my first thought. I quickly retraced in my mind what it was that I had said to the journalist; I had responded in the article that Google's recent announcement could be seen as positive but really it was a sidestepping of the larger challenge of identity…