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Content type: Examples
The 20 years since the 9/11 attacks have fundamentally changed the way the New York Police Department operates, leading it to use facial recognition software, licence plate readers, and mobile X-ray vans, among other surveillance tools for both detecting and blocking potential terrorist attacks and solving minor crimes. Surveillance drones monitor mass protests, antiterrorism officers interrogate protesters, and the NYPD’s Intelligence Division uses antiterror tactics against gang violence and…
Content type: Examples
The whistleblower said they were unable to find any legitimate reason for the high volume of the requests for location information. “There is no other explanation, no other technical reason to do this. Saudi Arabia is weaponising mobile technologies,” the whistleblower claimed.
The data leaked by the whistleblower was also seen by telecommunications and security experts, who confirmed they too believed it was indicative of a surveillance campaign by Saudi Arabia.
The data shows requests for…
Content type: Long Read
To celebrate Data Privacy Week, we spent the week discussing privacy and issues related to control, data protection, surveillance, and identity. Join the conversation on Twitter using #dataprivacyweek.
Do you live in a “smart city”? Chances are, you probably do (or at least your city claims to be). But do you know what exactly makes your city “smart”, beyond the marketing term? And what does this have to do with privacy?
Companies and governments will tell you that the more cameras, sensors…
Content type: Advocacy
Este informe es presentado por la Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) y Privacy International (PI). La Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) es una organización no gubernamental, sin nes de lucro, ubicada en Buenos Aires, que promueve los derechos civiles y sociales en Argentina y otros países latinoamericanos. Fue fundada en 1995 con el objetivo de fortalecer una cultura jurídica e institucional que garantice los derechos fundamentales de la gente, basado en el respeto a la…
Content type: News & Analysis
The elections in our midst here, there, and everywhere are increasingly resulting in governments who introduce policies that result in leaps backwards for dignity, equality, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Whether it is Poland or the Philippines, governments are overriding essential safeguards.
This week Britain’s proposed surveillance legislation took another step toward normalising mass surveillance. The United States of America has long promoted mass surveillance and maintains its…
Content type: Advocacy
This stakeholder report is a submission by Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) and Privacy International (PI). The Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) is a non-governmental, non-pro t organisation based in Buenos Aires that promotes civil and social rights in Argentina and other Latin American countries. It was founded in 1995 with the purpose of helping to strengthen a legal and institutional culture that guarantees the fundamental rights of the people, based on respect…
Content type: Long Read
The use of IMSI catchers[1] to arrest individuals is rarely documented — as IMSI catchers are used secretively in most countries. The arrest of Colombian drug lord Henry López Londoño in Argentina is therefore a rare opportunity to understand both how IMSI catchers are used, and also the complexity of their extraterritorial use.
In October 2012, Londoño — also known as Mi Sangre (“My Blood”) — was arrested in Argentina. His arrest was the result of cooperation between the Dirección de…
Content type: News & Analysis
This piece was written by PI Research Officer Edin Omanovic and originally appeared here.
Whatever happens over the next few years, if there is to be a storm, then it is best to prepare. It is essential that western liberal democratic societies are resilient enough to uphold their fundamental values.
One of the UK’s biggest security assets is one of its biggest security threats. The UK’s spies have access to and are allowed to exercise some of the most sophisticated electronic…
Content type: Long Read
This piece was written by Ashley Gorski, who is an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, and PI legal officer Scarlet Kim and originally appeared in The Guardian here.
In recent weeks, the Hollywood film about Edward Snowden and the movement to pardon the NSA whistleblower have renewed worldwide attention on the scope and substance of government surveillance programs. In the United States, however, the debate has often been a narrow one, focused on the…
Content type: Long Read
This week, Privacy International, together with nine other international human rights NGOs, filed submissions with the European Court of Human Rights. Our case challenges the UK government’s bulk interception of internet traffic transiting fiber optic cables landing in the UK and its access to information similarly intercepted in bulk by the US government, which were revealed by the Snowden disclosures. To accompany our filing, we have produced two infographics to illustrate the…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International is today proud to release the Surveillance Industry Index (SII), the world's largest publicly available educational resource of data and documents of its kind on the surveillance industry, and an accompanying report charting the growth of the industry and its current reach.
The SII, which is based on data collected by journalists, activists, and researchers across the world is the product of months of collaboration between Transparency Toolkit and Privacy…
Content type: Press release
This week in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Committee will examine the Argentina’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), an international treaty which places obligations on signatories to guarantee human rights such as the right to privacy.
This review, by a body of independent experts charged with monitoring compliance with the ICCPR, comes at a critical time for Argentina laws and policies on privacy and surveillance.
Recent years have seen…
Content type: Press release
Esta semana en Ginebra, el Comité de Derechos Humanos de la ONU examinará el cumplimiento de la Argentina con el Pacto Internacional de Derechos Civiles y Políticos (PIDCP), un tratado internacional que establece obligaciones a los firmantes para garantizar los derechos humanos, como el derecho a la privacidad.
Este examen, por un grupo de expertos independientes encargados de vigilar el cumplimiento del PIDCP, llega en un momento crítico para las leyes y políticas de la Argentina sobre la…
Content type: Advocacy
La Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) y Privacy International toman nota de las respuestas del gobierno de Argentina a la lista de cuestiones antes de la presentación del informe, en particular en relación a la legislación, políticas y prácticas relacionadas con la vigilancia y la protección de los datos personales.
Privacy International es una organización de derechos humanos que trabaja para favorecer y promover el derecho a la privacidad y la lucha contra la vigilancia en todo el…
Content type: Advocacy
Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) and Privacy International note the replies by the government of Argentina to the list of issues prior to the submission of the report, in particular in relation to the laws, policies and practices related to surveillance and protection of personal data.
Privacy International is a human rights organisation that works to advance and promote the right to privacy and fight surveillance around the world. The Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) is a…
Content type: Advocacy
La Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) y Privacy International toman nota de las respuestas del gobierno de Argentina a la lista de cuestiones antes de la presentación del informe, en particular en relación a la legislación, políticas y prácticas relacionadas con la vigilancia y la protección de los datos personales.
Privacy International es una organización de derechos humanos que trabaja para favorecer y promover el derecho a la privacidad y la lucha contra la vigilancia en todo el…
Content type: Long Read
The recent back and forth between Apple and the FBI over security measures in place to prevent unauthorised access to data has highlighted the gulf in understanding of security between technologists and law enforcement. Modern debates around security do not just involve the state and the individual, the private sector plays a very real role too. There are worrying implications for the safety and security of our devices. Today, a new company stepped in to this discussion -- though it had been…
Content type: News & Analysis
According to Snowden documents analysed by Privacy International, the Australian Signals Directorate had access to and used PRISM, a secret US National Security Agency program which provides access to user data held by Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
This is the third spy agency of the 'Five Eyes' alliance confirmed to have had secret access to Silicon Valley company data - an alliance whose rules and policies remain classified. Earlier this year, a British court ruled that GCHQ access to…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy is a human right, and needs very clear legal protections. 'Safe Harbor' was clear as mud and placed privacy rights globally at risk.
Today's European Court of Justice decision should be no surprise for industry or governments. For over fifteen years the U.S. Government has resisted implementing basic and effective privacy law and created absurd stopgap measures because U.S. Congress is incapable of acting upon what consumers and citizens have long asked for. The fact over 100 countries…
Content type: News & Analysis
While two of the Vice journalists who were recently arrested in Turkey and charged with terror offenses have now been released, this remain a deeply concerning incident.* It is the latest episode in what is a pincer movement against our right to protect our data.
Two British journalists and their Turkey-based Iraqi translator working for VICE News were arrested last Thursday and charged with "engaging in terrorist activity". According to Turkish authorities, one member of the group had an…
Content type: News & Analysis
Here are eight things we have learned from this week's hack of some 400GB of internal company material and correspondence from Italian surveillance company Hacking Team.
The Citizen Lab was right
The Citizen Lab, who in 2014 identified some 21 countries that are potential customers of Hacking Team, were right about all of them. A 2015 report stated that there was likely to be more. In fact, at least 45 countries are purchasers of Hacking Team's…
Content type: Press release
British intelligence services acted unlawfully in accessing millions of people’s personal communications collected by the NSA, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled today. The decision marks the first time that the Tribunal, the only UK court empowered to oversee GHCQ, MI5 and MI6, has ever ruled against the intelligence and security services in its 15 year history.
The Tribunal declared that intelligence sharing between the United States and the…
Content type: Report
In societies that are in the process of transition towards democracy, democratic control of intelligence organisations is both an indispensable requirement and a pressing need. In many cases, the most serious human rights violations committed by dictatorial governments were intrinsically linked to draconian surveillance and control systems. Systematic spying on trade unions, students and dissident groups was a common feature of 20th-century dictatorships. The persistent violation of citizens’…
Content type: News & Analysis
The following is an excerpt from an Op-Ed written in the New Zealand Herald by Privacy International's Legal Officer Anna Crowe:
Since the release of documents by Edward Snowden nearly a year ago, New Zealand has often been seen as a passive participant in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, not unlike a good kid hanging out with the wrong crowd.
However, Snowden documents released last month and the news that New Zealand appears to be sharing intelligence…
Content type: News & Analysis
May Day serves as a timely reminder that across their history, intelligence services have targeted trade unions and other organisations working for progressive social change.
Intelligence agencies have sought to justify expanded surveillance capabilities on the basis of pressing national security threats, particularly terrorism; however, as the Snowden revelations have highlighted, intelligence agencies actually often use these capabilities to monitor organisations that promote human…
Content type: News & Analysis
Just a few weeks ago, thousands of Argentinians had their privacy rights violated when the country’s electoral registration roll, which had been made available online, experienced a major leak of personal data following the presidential election.
Despite some early warnings on the weaknesses of the system, the government did nothing to fix the situation, allowing serious technical flaws in an online system to persist and refusing to respond to the crisis, further…
Content type: News & Analysis
A strong, unified voice from the tech industry is absolutely essential to reforming the mass and intrusive surveillance programs being run by the Five Eyes, so we welcome today's statement from AOL, Apple, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo.
Companies have obligations to respect human rights and not be complicit in mass surveillance. Given what has been publicly revealed over the past six months, we must know for certain that the companies we entrust with our information…
Content type: Long Read
The recent revelations, made possible by NSA-whistleblower Edward Snowden, of the reach and scope of global surveillance practices have prompted a fundamental re- examination of the role of intelligence services in conducting coordinated cross-border surveillance.
The Five Eyes alliance of States – comprised of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Canada’s Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the…
Content type: News & Analysis
With the launch of the "Eyes Wide Open" project, Privacy International has put together a fact sheet about the secretive Five Eyes alliance. Consider this a guide to the secret surveillance alliance that has infiltrated every aspect of the modern global communications system.
Beginning in 1946, an alliance of five English-speaking countries (the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) developed a series of bilateral agreements over more than a decade that became known as the UKUSA…
Content type: Press release
The United Nations General Assembly should approve a new resolution and make clear that indiscriminate surveillance is never consistent with the right to privacy, five human rights organizations said in a November 21, 2013 letter to members of the United Nations General Assembly.
After heated negotiations, the draft resolution on digital privacy initiated by Brazil and Germany emerged on November 21 relatively undamaged, despite efforts by the …