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Content type: Impact Case Study

Fighting Mass Surveillance in the Post-Snowden Era

What HappenedOn 5 June 2013, The Guardian published the first in a series of documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, a whistleblower who had worked with the NSA. The documents revealed wide-ranging mass surveillance programs conducted by the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which capture the communications and data of hundreds of millions of people around the world. In addition to revealing the mass surveillance programs of the NSA…
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Content type: Impact Case Study

How we fought and beat governments unlawfully storing our data

PI and our global partners have been at the forefront of challenging communications data retention for over a decade. What is the problem Communications data, also known as metadata, tells a story about your digital activity and answers the who, when, what, and how of a specific communication. While communications data doesn't include the contents of a message, all of the other information about the message can be very revealing about people, their habits, thoughts, health and personal…
Reports Of The Death Of Communications Privacy Are Greatly Exaggerated: Reflections On The Recent UN Human Rights Committee Findings On South Africa
Content type: News & Analysis

Reports Of The Death Of Communications Privacy Are Greatly Exaggerated: Reflections On The Recent UN Human Rights Committee Findings On South Africa

This guest piece was written by Jane Duncan of the Right2Know Campaign. It does not necessarily reflect the views or position of Privacy International. On 23rd March the United Nations Human Rights Committee released its assessment on South Africa’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The report includes a blistering attack on the Government for failing to respect the privacy of the communications of users and makes…
Content type: Press release

European Court invalidates Data Retention Directive, says mass surveillance of metadata interferes with right to privacy

The ruling today from the European Court of Justice, invalidating the European Union’s 2006 Data Retention Directive policy, was strong and unequivocal: the right to privacy provides a fundamental barrier between the individual and powerful institutions, and laws allowing for indiscriminate, blanket retention on this scale are completely unacceptable. As the Court states, it is not, and never was, proportionate to spy on the entire population of Europe. The types of data retained under this…