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Content type: News & Analysis
Uganda's Presidential election in January 2021 resulted in the incumbent President Museveni winning his sixth term in office, having held power for 35 years. The election took place amidst a global pandemic and the run up to election day was fraught. Violence left dozens dead and hundreds more arrested, including the opposition candidate Bobi Wine. Mass rallies and in person campaign meetings were banned due to Covid restrictions and political parties in Uganda were encouraged to conduct “…
Content type: News & Analysis
Unwanted Witness’ research into Safeboda highlighted the company’s failure to comply with some of the law's core data protection principles, with a number of implications for the exercise of data subject rights. The enforcement action against Safeboda by National Information Technology Authority, Uganda (NITA-U) requires the company to make fundamental changes to how they handle people's personal data in order to comply with the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019.
This first landmark…
Content type: Examples
A study describes the data transmitted to backend servers by the Google/Apple based contact tracing (GAEN) apps in use in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Denmark and finds that the health authority client apps are generally well-behaved from a privacy point of view, although the Irish, Polish, Danish, and Latvian apps could be improved in this respect. However, the study also finds that the Google Play Services component of the apps contacts Google servers as often as every 20 minutes…
Content type: Examples
On March 24 the German Bundestag passed a comprehensive amendment to the Infection Protection Act that authorises the Federal Ministry of Health to implement measures for medical care without the consent of the Federal Council. These include the ability to impose curfews and travel restrictions, override patent protection for medical products, and issue ordinances creating other exceptions to the law. The Federal Data Protection Commissioner criticised the proposals because he doubted whether…
Content type: Examples
A review of European privacy laws considers whether the tracking and monitoring methods China used to shut down the COVID-19 epidemic are in compliance with GDPR. The French data protection authority CNIL says employers are not allowed to take mandatory temperature readings from employees or visitors or require them to fill out compulsory medical questionnaires. Italy passed emergency legislation requiring anyone who has recently stayed in an at-risk area to notify health authorities. Germany…
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…
Content type: Advocacy
At the core of data protection debates, there is a power play between empowering individuals to control their data and empowering those who use (or want to) use their data. By regulating data processing, it provides avenues for individuals to exercise their rights if there is any unlawful interference in this power play.
It is crucial for any regulatory framework to be centred around the protection of human rights, autonomy and dignity, and therefore essential to ensure that…