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Content type: News & Analysis
Facing intense scrutiny from a Swiss government inquiry into the human rights impact of the commercial surveillance trade, companies have packed up and are no longer attempting to export their spying technology from Switzerland.
Speaking with St. Galler Tagblatt, one of Switzerland’s largest German-language daily newspapers, government spokeswoman Marie Avet confirmed that the companies have cancelled export applications for surveillance technology - including all applications for…
Content type: News & Analysis
Only a few days after it was reported that intrusive surveillance technology developed and sold by Italian surveillance company Hacking Team was found in some of the most repressive countries in the world, Privacy International has uncovered evidence which suggests the company has received over €1 million in public financing.
It has come to Privacy International’s attention that Hacking Team appears to have received €1.5 million from two venture capital funds originating from the Region of…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the same week that the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice labelled the retention of electronic communications data throughout Europe as a “serious interference with the right to privacy”, the French National Assembly has codified into law a suite of invasive and unrestrained surveillance powers, allowing an expanded range of government bodies invasive access to citizens electronic communications data and content and threatening the privacy rights of the French people.…
Content type: News & Analysis
Update:
After an initial discussion with technical and government experts involved in drafting and negotiating the new controls on “intrusion software”, some of our initial questions have been clarified. To read what they had to say, go here.
One of the major dangers of imposing export controls on surveillance systems is the risk of overreach. While you want the scope of the systems being controlled and the language to be wide enough to catch the targeted product and its variants, you also…
Content type: News & Analysis
The proliferation of private companies across the world developing, selling and exporting surveillance systems used to violate human rights and facilitate internal repression has been largely due to the lack of any meaningful regulation.
But a huge step toward finally regulating this billion-dollar industry was taken this week, when on Wednesday night the 41 countries that make up the Wassenaar Arrangement, the key international instrument that imposes controls on the export of…
Content type: News & Analysis
Through the Aiding Privacy project, Privacy International is promoting the development of international standards around data protection in the humanitarian and development fields and working with relevant organisations to make this happen.
A new contribution towards this goal, Protecting Beneficiary Privacy: Principles and operational standards for the secure use of personal data in cash and e-transfer programmes, was released last week by the Cash Learning Partnership (CaLP) and…
Content type: News & Analysis
In a move that echoes strong action taken in the past by European officials to protect privacy, the Belgian and Dutch data protection authorities on Wednesday announced that they will begin an investigation into the security of the SWIFT financial system.
The announcement comes on the heels of our letters to twenty-eight European DPAs last month, which sought answers regarding the NSA's reportedly unauthorized access to SWIFT's financial messaging system and asked for an…
Content type: News & Analysis
As anticipated, the Snowden revelations – first referred to in the opening session as the “elephant in the room” – soon became the central focus of many of the 150 workshops that took place during the 8th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Bali, and dominated the bilateral meetings that took place between governments, the private sector, the tech community, and civil society.
The various stakeholders arrived at the IGF ready to pursue their own agendas. The U.S. came to try and restore…
Content type: News & Analysis
Today’s much-anticipated launch of the 2013 Aid Transparency Index, an industry standard for assessing transparency among major aid donors, shows that, despite progress, many aid agencies continue to maintain secrecy around what they are funding.
Further, for those agencies that achieved high rankings in the index, transparency alone does not prevent one of our larger concerns: aid which facilitates impermissible surveillance of communities and individuals in the developing world.…
Content type: News & Analysis
The Zimbabwean government extended its reach into the private lives of its citizens this week by promulgating a new law establishing a central database of information about all mobile telephone users in the country. The Statutory Instrument 142 of 2013 on Postal and Telecommunications (Subscriber Registration) Regulations 2013, gazetted last Friday, raises new challenges to the already embattled rights to privacy and free expression in Zimbabwe, increasing the potential that the…
Content type: News & Analysis
The development agenda is heralding a new cure-all for humanitarian and development challenges – data.
In the latest incarnation of the development world’s dominant paradigm, ICTs for Development, data is being embraced, analysed and monitored by companies, humanitarian organisations, aid donors and governments alike. Yet despite the promises of data evangelists that big and open data can revolutionise innovation, education, health care and infrastructure, the potential risks of…
Content type: News & Analysis
All across the U.S. on 4 July, thousands of Americans gathered at Restore the Fourth rallies, in support of restoring the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and to protest the recently-disclosed information regarding NSA spying on American citizens. Demonstrations took place in over 100 cities, calling on the U.S. government to respect the privacy rights of citizens in America and individuals around the world.
With all this talk of constitutional …
Content type: News & Analysis
In an encouraging first response to our complaint against surveillance company Gamma International (Gamma), the UK National Contact Point (NCP) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced that it will further investigate our claim against Gamma, as the evidence submitted appears to substantiate our allegations.
In February 2013, Privacy International, together with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, Bahrain Watch, the Bahrain Center…
Content type: News & Analysis
A longer version of this article was previously published in Wired on 10 May 2013.
We all know surveillance is big in Putin’s Russia. What you may not know is that Russia’s surveillance tech is being used all over the world, even in the U.S.
The Kremlin is up to its domes in spy technology. One reason is fear, provoked by the Arab Spring, of a growing and diffuse protest movement that uses social media to organize. Notably, the authorities have taken an interest in DPI (…
Content type: News & Analysis
The drive for accountability in aid spending has put humanitarian and development agencies under pressure to collect an ever-growing amount of data about those who receive their assistance. Donors also increasingly demand that new technologies are deployed to ensure aid reaches those it is targeted at; preventing people from fraudulently using refugees’ identities, for example, was a key motivation behind UNHCR’s recent introduction of biometric technology to register Syrian…
Content type: News & Analysis
Below is an excerpt of an article that recently appeared on Slate, written by our partner Kevin Donovon, a researcher at the University of Cape Town, and Carly Nyst, Head of International Advocacy at Privacy International:
"Move over, mobile phones. There’s a new technological fix for poverty: biometric identification. Speaking at the World Bank on April 24, Nandan Nilekani, director of India’s universal identification scheme, promised that the project will be “transformational.” It “uses…
Content type: News & Analysis
Just over a year ago, vitally important reforms to European privacy and data protection laws were proposed. Now these reforms, which will affect the rights of half a billion Europeans, are being watered down in their passage through various European parliamentary committees as MEPs succumb to an unprecedented industry lobbying onslaught. There is now irrefutable evidence of the impact of this lobbying, thanks to a technology-powered research method comparing corporate lobby documents…
Content type: Press release
A European privacy group claimed today that dozens of amendments to the new Data Protection Regulation being proposed by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are being copied word-for-word from corporate lobby papers, with MEPs frequently failing to even remember their own amendments. Max Schrems, of the website and campaign Europe v Facebook, noticed striking similarities between proposed amendments and lobby papers written by representatives of Amazon, eBay, the American Chamber of…
Content type: News & Analysis
The social news website MiroirSocial.com confirmed yesterday that the prominent French technology firm Bull SA has sold its controversial mass surveillance "Eagle" system to Stéphane Salies, one of its chief designers and an ex-director of Bull. The surveillance software was previously manufactured and supplied by Bull’s subsidiary, Amesys, a company that is currently the subject of a judicial enquiry in Paris following a legal complaint filed by two human rights organisations, the…
Content type: News & Analysis
One of the first things that strikes you about the chaotic East African metropolises of Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe is the blanket of adverts for mobile phone companies that covers them, from the walls of the immigration hall at Harare airport, to the rickety shacks that line the dusty streets of Kampala. Where official signage is unavailable, DIY versions are painted onto the roofs and walls of houses and small businesses. Stores selling mobile phones are rarely more than a few short steps away…
Content type: News & Analysis
The Home Office constantly insists that trafffic data is not about the content of the pages you look at, but about the sites you visit.
This would have made some sense in 1999 when RIPA was first being debated, but technology has moved on and new open data sources are now available. This allows for vastly more invasive tracking in 2012 than was envisaged in 2000. We’ve done a little bit of work on how…
The English Wikipedia contains 4 million articles, which contain 18 million links out…
Content type: News & Analysis
By now, UK internet users are probably familiar with major sites asking them to consent to the use of website cookies. This is prompted by the 'cookie law' (aka "Directive 2002/58 on Privacy and Electronic Communications", otherwise known as the E-Privacy Directive), which is proving a privacy trainwreck. Theoretically, the Directive was a good idea - a method of preventing companies secretly following a user from site to site across the web. However, ill-executed law can be worse than no law…
Content type: News & Analysis
Earlier this year, Privacy International began research into the corporate social responsibility policies of companies that sell communications surveillance technology. Given that this technology is known to facilitate human rights abuses in repressive regimes around the world, surveillance tech companies that claims corporate responsibility might be expected to address such concerns in their CSR policy documents.
Of the 246 companies known to partake in the communications surveillance…
Content type: News & Analysis
The APEC Data Privacy Subgroup (DPS) commenced a new five year work programme at a meeting in Moscow in February 2012. This follows the commitment by APEC Leaders in late 2011 to the Cross Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) system as one way implementing the APEC Data Privacy Framework.
The Joint Oversight Panel was formed at the DPS meeting in Moscow and comprises members from the US (chair), Chinese Taipei and Mexico, with the chair of the DPS (from Canada) as alternate – who will…
Content type: News & Analysis
PI spent the first half of February in Asia, visiting our regional partners and speaking at events. Our trip began in Delhi, where the Centre for Internet and Society (in collaboration with the Society in Action Group) had organized two consecutive privacy conferences – an invite-only conclave on Friday 3rd February and a free symposium open to the public on Saturday 4th February. The conclave consisted of two panels, the first focusing on the relationship between national security…
Content type: News & Analysis
Last evening (in India, that is) we got some very good news. Earlier, an online news item in a major newsmagazine described a forthcoming report from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, a cross-party body created to study Bills being presented for consideration in Parliament, as having expressed its reservations about the NIAI Bill, that they would recommend recasting it. The NIAI Bill seeks to set up a National Information Authority, whose job is to take over the functioning of…
Content type: News & Analysis
The second 2011 meeting of the APEC Privacy Subgroup took place in San Francisco in mid September, and finalised the package of documents that comprise the Cross Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) system. Endorsed by the parent Electronic Commerce Steering Group (ECSG), these will now go forward for ratification by Ministers in Hawaii in November, and subsequent implementation. The Subgroup’s 2012 Work Plan envisages establishment of the Joint Oversight Panel (JoP), commencement of…
Content type: News & Analysis
An international alliance of organisations and individuals from 27 countries has lodged a petition calling on the Council of Europe to start an indepth survey on the collection and storage of biometric data by member states.
European governments are increasingly demanding storage of biometric data (fingerprints and facial scans) from individuals. These include storage on contactless 'RFID' chips in passports and/or ID cards. Some are going even further by implementing…
Content type: News & Analysis
2011 is supposed to be the year that the APEC pathfinder projects on Cross Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) deliver a functional system for businesses to be certified for transfer of personal information between participating APEC economies.
After the last round of APEC privacy meetings in Washington DC on 1-3 March, this prospect is looking increasingly remote. Even the basic set of documentation and processes required for the process of self-certification and assessment of businesses has yet to…
Content type: News & Analysis
Skype has consistently assured that it protects its users and their communications. Having reviewed the company's technology and policies we have grounds for concern about Skype's overall level of security, and we believe there are a number of questions to which the company must respond. Skype's misleading security assurances continue to expose users around the world to unnecessary and dangerous risk. It's time for Skype to own up to the reality of its security and to take a leadership…