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Content type: Long Read
It is common for families with no recourse to public funds who attempt to access support from local authorities to have their social media monitored as part of a ‘Child in Need’ assessment.
This practice appears to be part of a proactive strategy on the part of local authorities to discredit vulnerable families in order to refuse support. In our experience, information on social media accounts is often wildly misinterpreted by local authorities who make serious and unfounded allegations…
Content type: Report
It is common for families with no recourse to public funds who attempt to access support from local authorities to have their social media monitored as part of a 'Child in Need' assessment. This practice appears to be part of a proactive strategy on the part of local authorities to discredit vulnerable families in order to refuse support. In our experience, information on social media accounts is often wildly misinterpreted by local authorities who make serious and unfounded allegations…
Content type: Examples
Facebook's scientists are analysing location data about compliance with social distancing recommendations in various countries using information from a private vault of location information its apps have collected. The analysis shows that only "very modest" changes in habits in the US, France, and the UK, and much more substantial change in Spain and Italy between mid-February and mid-March. Other companies such as Google and Apple, may also be able to contribute insights into public behaviour…
Content type: Long Read
When you go abroad, you expect to show your passport right? But what if immigration authorities wanted access to your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts before they let you enter a country? What if they wanted to vet you based on your updates, photos, likes, retweets and even your DMs?
We think social media companies, who make literally billions of dollars out of you, and wield massive power and influence, should challenge governments on YOUR behalf. They should be protecting their users…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International has today sent letters to leading social media platforms to ask what they're doing to protect their users' from dangerous surveillance by government immigration authorities.
The letter comes following the implementation of plans by US authorities to require nearly all visa applicants to hand over identifiers of all social media accounts they have used in the previous five years, or face “serious immigration consequences”.
The move not only represents…
Content type: Long Read
(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).
Content type: Long Read
The Privacy International Network is celebrating Data Privacy Week, where we’ll be talking about how trends in surveillance and data exploitation are increasingly affecting our right to privacy. Join the conversation on Twitter using #dataprivacyweek.
It is no mystery that data exploitation is part of most consumer-oriented tech companies’ business models. A big part of our lives is recorded and exploited, from our web searches, to our personal communications, location, and our shopping habits…
Content type: Examples
In 2016, researchers discovered that the personalisation built into online advertising platforms such as Facebook is making it easy to invisibly bypass anti-discrimination laws regarding housing and employment. Under the US Fair Housing Act, it would be illegal for ads to explicitly state a preference based on race, colour, religion, gender, disability, or familial status. Despite this, some policies - such as giving preference to people who already this - work to ensure that white…
Content type: Long Read
Disclaimer: This piece was written in April 2017. Since publishing, further information has come out about Cambridge Analytica and the company's involvement in elections.
Recently, the data mining firm Cambridge Analytica has been the centre of tons of debate around the use of profiling and micro-targeting in political elections. We’ve written this analysis to explain what it all means, and the consequences of becoming predictable to companies and political campaigns.
What does…
Content type: News & Analysis
Earlier this month, only a few days before the new president of Egypt was sworn in, leaked documents from the Ministry of Interior revealed that the government is trying to acquire mass surveillance equipment capable of monitoring social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
While being billed as a way to monitor social media in order to “monitor security hazards in social networks” and “identify persons representing a danger on society” (sic), past and recent actions by…
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…