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Content type: Report
PI has been fighting against police using intrusive & disproportionate surveillance technologies at protests around the world for years. Unregulated surveillance and indiscriminate intrusions on our privacy have a chilling effect on the right to freedom of assembly.
We've fought to uncover the types of technologies that police secretly deploy at protests, and we have detailed how protesters around the world can try to protect their intimate and sensitive data from being captured by the…
Content type: Report
In the months following the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, more than half the world’s countries enacted emergency measures. With these measures came an increase in executive powers, a suspension of the rule of law, and an upsurge in security protocols – with subsequent impacts on fundamental human rights. Within this broader context, we have seen a rapid and unprecedented scaling up of governments’ use of technologies to enable widespread surveillance. Surveillance technologies exacerbated…
Content type: Long Read
The defense and protection of the environment continues to come at a high cost for activists and human rights defenders. In 2021, the murders of environment and land defenders hit a record high. This year, a report by Global Witness found that more than 1,700 environmental activists have been murdered in the past decade.
While the issue of surveillance of human rights defenders has received attention, evidence of the surveillance of environmental activists keeps mounting, with recent examples…
Content type: Report
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) contributes significantly to security and privacy. For that reason, PI has long been in favour of the deployment of robust E2EE.
Encryption is a way of securing digital communications using mathematical algorithms that protect the content of a communication while in transmission or storage. It has become essential to our modern digital communications, from personal emails to bank transactions. End-to-end encryption is a form of encryption that is even more private…
Content type: Report
This briefing takes a look at the private intelligence industry, a collection of private detectives, corporate intel firms, and PR agencies working for clients around the world that have made London their hub.
Often staffed by ex-spooks, and promising complete secrecy, little is known about them. But reports over the years have exposed their operations, including things like hacking and targeting of anti-corruption officials, spying on peaceful environment activists, and running fake '…
Content type: Report
In this briefing, Amnesty International, PI and The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) discuss the corporate structure of NSO group, one of the surveillance industry's well-known participants. The lack of transparency around NSO Group’s corporate structure and the lack of information about the relevant jurisdictions within which it operates are significant barriers in seeking prevention of, and accountability for, human rights violations reportedly linked to NSO Group’s…
Content type: Long Read
On 25 May 2021, the European Court of Human Rights issued its judgment in Big Brother Watch & Others v. the UK. Below, we answer some of the main questions relating to the case.
After our initial reaction, below we answer some of the main questions relating to the case.
NOTE: This post reflects our initial reaction to the judgment and may be updated.
What’s the ruling all about?
In a nutshell, one of the world’s most important courts, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human…
Content type: Report
Human rights defenders across the world have been facing increasing threats and harms as result of the use of digital and technological tools used by governments and companies which enable the surveillance, monitoring and tracking of individuals and communities. They are continuously at risk of violence, intimidation and surveillance as a direct consequence of the work they do. Such surveillance has been shown to lead to arbitrary detention, sometimes to torture and possibly to extrajudicial…
Content type: Examples
The Australian journalist Chris Buckley, who reports for the New York Times, was forced to leave China on April 10 after 24 years of reporting on the country, bringing the number of journalists forced out of the country in the last year to 19.
After travelling to Wuhan to report on the unfolding outbreak on the day the city was locked down in January, he was told to stop when his press card expired in February. The division of the Foreign Ministry responsible for international media…
Content type: Examples
The International Press Institute has found that in both democratic and autocratic states the public health crisis has given governments the excuse of preventing the spread of disinformation to exercise control over the media, whether by criminalising journalism or controlling the public narrative and restricting access to information about the pandemic. The International Federal of Journalists has also found that three-quarters of journalists report that working conditions have deteriorated…
Content type: Examples
On April 20 Hong Kong authorities arrested some of the most prominent anti-China activists. The need to clear the streets to protect public health during the COVID-19 outbreak provided the authorities an opportunity to cripple the protest movement that had spread across the country beginning in mid-2019. Chinese officials in Hong Kong have also called for improved national security education in the city and for the passage of a national security law giving law enforcement and prosecutors…
Content type: Examples
Tanzania's Communication Regulatory Authority punished three TV stations for airing content that was "misleading and untrue" about the government's strategy on fighting coronavirus. Critics believe that TCRA objected to a report that criticised President John Magufuli for saying that churches should remain open on the basis that "coronavirus cannot survive in a church".
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-52214740
Writer: Dickens Olewe
Publication: BBC
Content type: Report
Like many others, PI were alarmed at recent reports that Facebook have been making mobile phone numbers (which users believed to be) provided for the express purpose of "two-factor authentication" (2FA) both searchable, and a target for advertising by default.
One of the myriad ways Facebook displays targeted adverts to users is through so-called "Custom Audiences". These "custom audiences" are lists of contact details, including phone numbers and email addresses, uploaded by advertisers.…
Content type: Explainer
Could an app you have never even heard of put you at risk? This is what happened to Chloe (real name has been changed), an investigative journalist exposed by an app that her source was using.
Her source was using TrueCaller, an app that aims to identify phone numbers so users can filter out calls, even if it is from a number they have never encountered before. TrueCaller relies on users tagging numbers who are calling them. And when your number is tagged there is no way for you to know that…
Content type: Case Study
Photo by Roger H. Goun
Chloe is an investigative journalist working for an international broadcast service; we will call the TV show she works for The Inquirer. She travels around the world to work with local journalists on uncovering stories that make the headlines: from human trafficking to drug cartels and government corruption. While her documentaries are watched by many and inspire change in the countries she works in, you would not know who Chloe is if we were to tell you her real name.…
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: Explainer graphic
You can also read a more detailed explainer about social media intelligence (SOCMINT) here.
Content type: Report
6 March 2019
Privacy International (PI) has written Facebook to express our concern and request urgent answers regarding its policy on the sharing of mobile phone numbers of its users.
Alarmingly, recent reports say that some of the phone numbers provided by users for the express purpose of two-factor authentication (2FA) as a way of securing their accounts are now made searchable across the platform by default.
PI is concerned that allowing such numbers to be searchable…
Content type: Explainer graphic
You can also read a more detailed explainer about facial recognition cameras here.
Content type: Explainer graphic
You can also read a more detailed explainer about IMSI catchers here.
Content type: Examples
In July 2018, Facebook announced it was investigating whether the Boston-based company Crimson Hexagon had violated the company's policies on surveillance. Crimson Hexagon markets itself as offering "consumer insights". Its customers include a Russian non-profit with ties to the Kremlin, and multiple US government agencies. After pressure from civil liberties groups, Facebook put a policy in place in March 2017 barring the use of members' data for the purposes of government surveillance.…
Content type: Report
In December 2018, the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders-Kenya published a report analysing the needs and concerns of human rights defenders (HRD) in relation to privacy, data protection and communications surveillance.
A summary of their findings is below. Access the full report on their website.
Content type: Examples
In 2015, The Intercept obtained documents showing that the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota used a fake Facebook account to friend and monitor local Black Lives Matter activists, and collect their personal information and photographs without their knowledge. The account was discovered in a cache of files the Mall of America provided to Bloomington officials after a large BLM protest against police brutality that was held at the mall. After the protest, the city charged 11 protesters…
Content type: Explainer
What is SOCMINT?
Social media intelligence (SOCMINT) refers to the techniques and technologies that allow companies or governments to monitor social media networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook or Twitter.
SOCMINT includes monitoring of content, such as messages or images posted, and other data, which is generated when someone uses a social media networking site. This information involves person-to-person, person-to-group, group-to-group, and includes interactions that are private and…
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…