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Content type: News & Analysis
1st December 2017
The following appeared in the Daily Telegraph, and was written by Carly Nyst, Legal Director of Privacy International:
"Robert Hannigan, the new head of GCHQ, announced his arrival this week with a call for “greater co-operation” with security forces by tech companies. Hannigan’s article in the Financial Times illustrated vividly the destructive ideology that has driven the infiltration by the British and American intelligence agencies into every aspects of the digital realm – an unquestioning…
Content type: News & Analysis
1st December 2017
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: News & Analysis
1st December 2017
This piece originally appeared in Open Democracy here.
As the UK Parliament returns from its summer break, everyone’s back to talking about Brexit. But there’s another policy of existential significance to our democracy that we really need to be talking about. I refer here to the innocuously named ‘Investigatory Powers Bill’. The House of Lords have been debating the ‘bulk powers’ — what we would call the mass surveillance measures — of the Bill over the recent days. We are literally weeks…
Content type: Press release
1st December 2017
Key points
Privacy International has obtained previously unseen government documents that reveal British spy agency GCHQ collects social media information on potentially millions of people.
GCHQ collected and accesses this information by gaining access to private companies’ databases.
Letters obtained by Privacy International reveal that the body tasked with overseeing intelligence agencies’ activities (the Investigatory Powers Commissioner) was kept in the dark as UK intelligence agencies…
Content type: Press release
1st December 2017
In today’s latest hearing in our ongoing legal challenge against the collection of massive troves of our personal data by the UK intelligence agencies, shocking new evidence has emerged about GCHQ’s attempts to yet again avoid proper independent scrutiny for its deeply intrusive surveillance activities.
In a truly breath-taking exchange of letters between the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (“IPCO”) and the Director of Legal Affairs at GCHQ, it has emerged that GCHQ have attempted…
Content type: News & Analysis
3rd November 2017
This piece was written by PI Legal Office Millie Graham Wood.
“The UK is leading the way on modern data protection laws and we have worked closely with our EU partners to develop world leading data protection standards”[1] according to, Matt Hancock MP, Minister of State for Digital. However, the proposals in the UK Data Protection Bill continue and expand a highly secretive system which allows processing of personal data to be exempt from key safeguards and fundamental protections on…
Content type: Press release
1st November 2017
Privacy International has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to compel disclosure of records relating to a 1946 surveillance agreement between the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, known as the “Five Eyes alliance”.* We are represented by Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic (MFIA). The most recent publicly available version of the Five Eyes surveillance agreement dates from 1955. Our complaint was filed before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia…
Content type: News & Analysis
24th October 2017
Privacy International’s Data Exploitation Programme Lead was invited to give evidence to the Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence at the U.K. House of Lords. The session sought to establish how personal data should be owned, managed, valued, and used for the benefit of society.
Link to the announcement of the session: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/ai-committee/news-parliament-2017/data-evidence-session/
Full video recording of the session: …
Content type: Press release
23rd October 2017
Key points
Privacy International surveyed 21 EU member states' legislation on data retention and examined their compliance with fundamental human rights standards
0 out of the 21 States examined by PI are currently in compliance with these standards (as interpreted in two landmark judgements by the Court of Justice of the European Union: Tele-2/Watson and Digital Rights Ireland)
Privacy International is calling for:
EU member states to review their legislation on data retention and, if…
Content type: Press release
23rd October 2017
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, particularly in…
Content type: Long Read
18th October 2017
On 8 September 2017, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal decided to refer questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) concerning the collection of bulk communications data (‘BCD’) by the Security Intelligence Agencies from mobile network operators.
The BCD regime was initially secret. In an earlier judgment, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that the regime was not compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights prior to its public avowal, but (subject to the…
Content type: Press release
4th October 2017
On 5 October 2017, Privacy International will appear before the UK Court of Appeal to continue its challenge to the British government's large scale hacking powers. The case questions the decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) to sanction the UK government's power to hack broad categories of people or property without any individualised suspicion.
TIMELINE AND KEY POINTS
- Privacy International began fighting bulk government hacking in 2014 at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal…
Content type: Press release
1st October 2017
While welcoming the objective of the Bill, Privacy International has sent a briefing to the House of Lords and a letter to Minister of State for Digital, Matt Hancock MP, outlining key concerns and recommendations. The Bill's stated aim is “to create a clear and coherent data protection regime”, and to update the UK data protection law, including by bringing the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Law Enforcement Directive (DPLED) - into the UK domestic system.…
Content type: Long Read
9th August 2017
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. must meet…
Content type: Long Read
11th July 2017
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.S.-U.K.…
Content type: Press release
18th June 2017
Please find attached a copy of the briefing along with promotional photographs with the briefing.
Privacy International has today sent top EU and UK Brexit negotiators* a briefing on their vulnerability to potential surveillance by each other, and others. Brexit negotiations are to begin today.
The global privacy rights NGO has highlighted to the negotiators the risk of sophisticated surveillance capabilities being deployed against each other and by others, and provided negotiators a Faraday…
Content type: Long Read
8th May 2017
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. Because the U…
Content type: News & Analysis
24th April 2017
Creative Commons Photo Credit: Source
The financial services industry is eager to gather more and more data about our lives. Apart from mining the data they have historically collected such as credit history, they are looking to use our social media profiles to reach into our friendships and social interactions. They are using these data in new and unexpected ways, including personality profiling to determine the risk of lending to you, and thus the price you will pay.
Firstcarquote, a…
Content type: Long Read
13th April 2017
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 Cambridge…
Content type: Long Read
10th February 2017
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…