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Content type: News & Analysis
From unlocking a smartphone or getting through an airport, the use of an iris, fingerprint, or your face for identity verification is already widespread, and the market for it is set to rocket. While the technology is not new, its capability and uses are. As people, biometrics offers us much, but risks ultimately only serve data-hungry industries and government agencies: in the name of efficiency and security, it has the potential to bring chaos and vulnerability.
Obtaining reliable…
Content type: News & Analysis
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has contracted one of the world’s largest arms companies to manage a huge expansion of its biometric surveillance programme.
According to a presentation seen by Privacy International, the new system, known as Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART), will scoop up a whopping 180 million new biometric transactions per year by 2022.
It will replace the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT), which currently stores…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International wishes to raise serious concerns regarding the proposal to expand immigration records to include social media handles, associated identifiable information and search results. Specifically, in relation to the current request for comments Docket Number DHS 2017 0038, we object to the Department for Homeland Security proposal to update record source categories to include “publicly available information obtained from the internet”, “commercial data providers” and from “…
Content type: Press release
Privacy International, in partnership with 30+ national human rights organisations, has today written to national intelligence oversight bodies in over 40 countries seeking information on the intelligence sharing activities of their governments.
Countries may use secret intelligence sharing arrangements to circumvent international and domestic rules on direct surveillance. These arrangements can also lead to the exchange of information that can facilitate human rights abuses,…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International has today submitted comments to a U.S. government consultation on whether the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should keep the social media details of individuals travelling to the US in so-called “Alien Files” documenting all immigrants.
We’ve urged that they don’t, and that they review and stop all similar social media surveillance by the DHS.
The systematic surveillance of social media is an increasingly dangerous trend …
Content type: Long Read
This piece was originally published in Just Security in August 2017
We recently published an analysis in Lawfare of the United Kingdom’s surveillance framework as it relates to the proposed U.S.-U.K. agreement for cross-border law enforcement data requests. Implementing the U.S.-U.K. agreement is subject to passage of draft legislation proposed by the Justice Department to Congress in July 2016 (“U.S. DOJ legislation”), which will set standards that approved partners like the U.K.…
Content type: Long Read
This piece was originally published in Lawfare in July 2017.
The United Kingdom has been a key partner in the United States’ efforts to reform the process that law enforcement officials use to make cross-border requests for data. These efforts address both foreign governments’ requests for data stored in the U.S. and reciprocal requests by the U.S. government for data stored abroad. As part of these efforts, the U.S. and the U.K. have negotiated a draft bilateral agreement (“U…
Content type: News & Analysis
Photo Credit: MoD UK
‘Security’ in the policy world has practically no currency without a specific prefix. For example, we could discuss 'national' security as distinct from 'consumer' security or 'energy' security. ‘Cyber’ security is the new prefix on the policy block, and it is gradually forcing a rethink on what it means to be secure in a modern society. In the course of Privacy International’s work globally, we have observed that many governments frame cyber security as national security…
Content type: Long Read
In January 2017, Kenya’s information and communication technology regulator, the Communications Authority of Kenya, announced that it was spending over 2 billion shillings (around 14 million USD) on new initiatives to monitor Kenyans’ communications and regulate their communications devices. The press lit up with claims of spying, and members of Kenya’s ICT community vowed to reject the initiatives as violating Kenyans’ constitutional rights, including the right to privacy (Article 31…
Content type: News & Analysis
Image source: AFP
Earlier this month, the Kenyan daily The Star reported that UK-based data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica had been quietly contracted by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s party in a bid to win himself a second term in office. State House officials were quick to deny the claims, while the company itself issued no comment.
Cambridge Analytica has exploded onto the scene following revelations that its psychometric profiling techniques were used and reportedly played a role in…
Content type: Advocacy
Earlier this month, it was reported that UK-based data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica had been quietly contracted by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s party in a bid to win a second term in office. Privacy International has written to Cambridge Analytica to learn more about how the company assessed the risk of its work in Kenya and how it will ensure that Kenyans’ personal data will be protected.
Content type: Long Read
This piece was originally published in Lawfare in May 2017.
This post is part of a series written by participants of a conference at Georgia Tech in Surveillance, Privacy, and Data Across Borders: Trans-Atlantic Perspectives.
Cross-border law enforcement demands have become increasingly important to law enforcement in the digital age. Digital evidence in one jurisdiction—such as the United States—is often necessary to investigate a crime that has effects in another jurisdiction…
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
This week the United States Congress voted to strip away one of the country’s few safeguards of the right to privacy by repealing rules which would have limited internet service provider’s ability to use or share customers’ data without customers’ approval.
Meanwhile, last week, 6,500 kilometers away in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council called on states to strengthen customers’ control over their data and develop legislation to address harm from the sale or corporate sharing of…
Content type: News & Analysis
On a hot day in Nairobi, our researcher is speaking to an officer of Kenya’s National Intelligence Service (NIS). The afternoon is wearing on and the conversation has turned to the presidential elections, taking place in August this year. He has just finished describing the NIS’ highly secret surveillance powers and the disturbing ways in which these powers are deployed.
“It is what you might call ‘acceptable deaths,’” he states about the misuse of communications surveillance powers. “People…
Content type: Report
This investigation focuses on the techniques, tools and culture of Kenyan police and intelligence agencies’ communications surveillance practices. It focuses primarily on the use of surveillance for counterterrorism operations. It contrasts the fiction and reality of how communications content and data is intercepted and how communications data is fed into the cycle of arrests, torture and disappearances.
Communications surveillance is being carried out by Kenyan state actors, essentially…
Content type: Press release
Privacy International Executive Director Dr Gus Hosein said:
“If today’s leaks are authenticated, they demonstrate what we’ve long been warning about government hacking powers — that they can be extremely intrusive, have enormous security implications, and are not sufficiently regulated. Insufficient security protections in the growing amount of devices connected to the internet or so-called “smart” devices, such as Samsung Smart TVs, only compound the problem, giving governments easier…
Content type: Long Read
Introduction
A growing number of governments around the world are embracing hacking to facilitate their surveillance activities. Yet hacking presents unique and grave threats to our privacy and security. It is far more intrusive than any other surveillance technique, capable of accessing information sufficient to build a detailed profile of a person, as well as altering or deleting that information. At the same time, hacking not only undermines the security of targeted systems, but also has…
Content type: Long Read
This piece was orignally published in Slate in February 2017
In 2015, the FBI obtained a warrant to hack the devices of every visitor to a child pornography website. On the basis of this single warrant, the FBI ultimately hacked more than 8,700 computers, resulting in a wave of federal prosecutions. The vast majority of these devices—over 83 percent—were located outside the United States, in more than 100 different countries. Now, we are in the midst of the first cases…
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: Press release
Privacy International has today written to government ministers, members of the opposition, and oversight bodies reaffirming its call for the UK government to reveal secret intelligence sharing arrangements with the United States.
The original UKUSA agreement — drafted shortly after World War II — allows UK and US agencies to share, by default, any raw intelligence, collection equipment, decryption techniques, and translated documents.
Current arrangements also allow US…
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: Press release
Key points
Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, and seven other human rights organizations challenge UK mass surveillance and UK access to US mass surveillance at the European Court of Human Rights
This is the first case before the European Court of Human Rights to directly challenge UK and US mass surveillance revealed by the Snowden disclosures
National courts and oversight bodies have failed to rein in mass surveillance practices that impact hundreds of millions of…
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: Long Read
This piece originally appeared here.
On both sides of the Atlantic, we are witnessing the dramatic expansion of government hacking powers. In the United States, a proposed amendment to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure would permit the government to obtain a warrant, in certain circumstances, to hack unspecified numbers of electronic devices anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, across the pond, the British Parliament is currently debating the Investigatory…
Content type: News & Analysis
Remember when the world didn't know what Prism was? Those were the days. While privacy advocates, civil libertarians, and technologists had suspected or posited the existence of an extensive surveillance regime operated by the U.S. government, few knew the details and the extent of the operation.
Undoubtedly, we know more now than we did a week ago about the National Security Agency's covert operations and how the agency routinely spies on nearly anyone in the world. The public, many…
Content type: News & Analysis
When it comes to tackling corruption, we need to critically engage with the role of technology. One technology in particular is biometrics, a technology that identifies and stores on a database the identity of an individual through some physical characteristic, usually fingerprints or an iris scan. Biometrics is increasingly being used in ID and voter registration schemes. It is a technology that raises privacy and data protection issues but notwithstanding…
Content type: Press release
The committee of data protection regulators across Europe, the Working Party 29, announced today its opinion on the current “Privacy Shield”. The Opinion is expected shortly, and based on the statements made by the Working Party chair in a press conference, we understand that the Working Party, while noting improvements from the annulled “Safe Harbor” agreement, has serious concerns about a range of aspects of the current "Privacy Shield" agreement with the U.S.
Overall they note the…
Content type: News & Analysis
Image source
This is a guest post by Zoë Blackler.
If you want to know how the UK came to be the most watched nation in the world, with CCTV on every corner, you need to go back to 1942: the now ubiquitous policing aid was first developed for use in missile testing by the German military.
Tear gas, GPS trackers, pain rays, and surveillance drones - technologies developed by the military for use against foreign enemies have a habit of finding their way into the hands…