Search
Content type: News & Analysis
In a significant and forceful decision, on 1 March 2024 the UK's Data Protection Authority found that the UK Government's GPS tagging of migrants arriving to the UK by small boats and other "irregular" routes was unlawful.
The decision comes as a result of Privacy International's complaint filed in August 2022 against the GPS tagging policy, which alleged widespread and significant breaches of privacy and data protection law. Our complaint relied extensively on anonymous testimonies of…
Content type: Press release
9 November 2023 - Privacy International (PI) has just published new research into UK Members of Parliament’s (startling lack of) knowledge on the use of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) in public spaces, even within their own constituencies. Read the research published here in full: "MPs Asleep at the Wheel as Facial Recognition Technology Spells The End of Privacy in Public".PI has recently conducted a survey of 114 UK MPs through YouGov. Published this morning, the results are seriously…
Content type: Long Read
TAKE ACTION TO STOP THE END OF PRIVACY IN PUBLIC1. IntroductionThe use of facial recognition technology (FRT) by law enforcement and private companies in public spaces throughout the UK is on the rise. In August 2023, the government announced that it is looking to expand its use of FRT, which it considers “an increasingly important capability for law enforcement and the Home Office”. The indiscriminate use of this dystopian biometric technology to identify individuals in public spaces is a form…
Content type: Long Read
In June 2023, the UK government announced its proposal to expand its surveillance powers by, among others, forcing communications operators to undermine encryption or abstain from providing security software updates globally. Building on our response to the government’s plans, this piece explains why what they want to do puts every one of us at risk.
Why your trust (to technologies you use) matters
Surveillance and privacy are complex concepts to grasp – it’s part of the appeal to us at PI.…
Content type: Long Read
In 2022, Privacy International continued to produce real change by challenging governments and corporations that use data and technology to exploit us. And, we produced substantial impact that directly affects each of us.
Here are a handful of our biggest achievements in 2022.
WE CHALLENGED COMPANIES TO CHANGE THEIR BUSINESS MODELS AND PRACTICES
Regulators in UK, France, Greece, and Italy fined and restricted Clearview AI’s activity
Clearview AI built a massive database of our biometrics, by…
Content type: News & Analysis
Our mobile phones contain all kinds of data that ranges from photos, videos and emails to information about our health, the places we visit and our leisure time. This data is often relied upon by law enforcement authorities in criminal investigations.
Mobile phone extraction (MPE) tools are used for this purpose as they enable police and other authorities to download content and associated data from people’s phones. These tools are supplied by private companies to security forces and…
Content type: News & Analysis
We have been fighting for transparency and stronger regulation of the use of IMSI catchers by law enforcement in the UK since 2016. The UK police forces have been very secretive about the use of IMSI catchers – maintaining a strict “neither confirm nor deny” (NCND) policy. In our efforts to seek greater clarity we wrote to the UK body which monitors the use of covert investigatory powers, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (IPCO), asking the Commissioner to revisit this…
Content type: Long Read
The UK’s security services have the power to collect, analyse, and store huge amounts of personal data. They can target specific individuals, hack their computers, and intercept their data or communications, but they can also obtain personal datasets in bulk, intercept overseas communications in bulk, and collect huge swathes of communications data from telecomms providers.[1]
The public rightly expects that the vast amounts of personal data which agencies like MI5 collect and store will be…
Content type: Long Read
Since early 2021, PI have been investigating and challenging the latest stride in the UK’s cruel migration policies: the roll-out of GPS ankle tags to monitor migrants released on immigration bail, a dehumanising, invasive method of control that monitors and records people’s precise location 24/7.
More recently, we found out through Freedom of Information Requests that the Home Office is working to roll out "smartwatches" - devices that also record 24/7 location data, but instead of being…
Content type: News & Analysis
In a judgment of 14 October 2022, the UK High Court ordered the UK Home Office to provide remedy to the thousands of migrants affected by its unlawful policy and practice of seizing mobile phones from people arriving by small boats to UK shores.
The availability and spread of new technologies, and the exponential amounts of data they generate, are regularly being abused by governments to surveil and control people - but these new forms of surveillance are only starting to make their way through…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International collaborated with the Carter Center as part of a pre-election assessment team focussing on the use of technology in the run up to and during the Kenyan election which took place 9 August.
In the context of this pre-election assessment, PI travelled to Nairobi between 4th-10th July 2022 in order take a deeper look at issues connected to voting technologies being used in the Kenyan elections with a particular focus on the implementation of the Data Protection Act.
PI first…
Content type: Video
Please note this podcast was recorded before Sebastian and Netzpolitik were able to talk to PimEyes CEO Gobronidze in person.
Links
Find more from Sebastian
More of Netzpolitik's work on PimEyes
PI's work on facial recognition
Our work on Clearview
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International (PI) has today filed complaints with the Information Commissioner (ICO) and Forensic Science Regulator (FSR) against the UK Home Office's use of GPS ankle tags to monitor migrants released on immigration bail. This policy and practice represents a seismic change in the surveillance of migrants in the UK. PI was first alerted to this scheme by organisations such as Bail for Immigration Detainees, an independent charity that exists to challenge immigration detention in the…
Content type: News & Analysis
The relationship between privacy and access to abortion care
In 1973, in the state of Texas, it was a criminal offence to “procure or attempt” an abortion except if the purpose was “saving the life of the mother.” This law was enacted in 1854 by the Texas state legislature, and was part of a wave of provisions criminalising access to abortion care that was gaining ground across the U.S in the mid-1800s. It is worth highlighting that these laws were being passed at a time when women in the U.S…
Content type: News & Analysis
Last night, PI, Migrants Organise and Bail For Immigration Detainees joined forces to shine a light on the enduring plight of migrants in the UK who are subject to hardline and dehumanising Home Office policies.
Our joint light projection marked the 10 year anniversary of former Home Secretary Theresa’s May’s infamous 'hostile environment', a policy purposefully cruel that includes indefinite detention of migrants and refugees.
The past decade has also seen the steady creep of data sharing…
Content type: Report
Privacy International’s submissions for the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration inspection of the Home Office Satellite Tracking Service Programme
The Home Office have introduced 24/7 electronic monitoring and collection of the location data of migrants via GPS ankle tags. This seismic change cannot be overstated. The use of GPS tags and intention to use location data, kept for six years after the tag is removed, in immigration decision-making goes far beyond the mere…
Content type: Long Read
Here are just 10 of our biggest achievements in 2021.
WE CHALLENGED COMPANIES TO CHANGE THEIR BUSINESS MODELS AND PRACTICES
In 2021 we effectively challenged big tech companies including Google, Facebook, Tecno, and smaller and equally urgent companies like Clearview AI, Web-IQ, Palantir etc. and achieved substantial impact including:
- Popular diet apps include better protections in their products
Many diet sites and apps ask you to take tests to create profiles of your body and eating…
Content type: Video
Links
Italy fine
Our legal action
The ICO decision
Use of Clearview AI by police illegal under Belgian law, says Belgian interior minister
Clearview in Ukraine
Washington Post article
The pledge
Content type: News & Analysis
The UK government has acknowledged that section 8(4) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (“RIPA”) (which has since been repealed) violated Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In relation to Article 10, it specifically acknowledged that the way in which security agencies handled confidential journalistic material violated fundamental rights protected by Article 10.
As part of a friendly settlement with two applicants, the UK government acknowledged…
Content type: Press release
Today, the High Court ruled that the Home Secretary acted unlawfully and breached human rights and data protection laws by operating a secret, blanket policy of seizing, retaining and extracting data from the mobile phones of asylum seekers arriving by small boat.
This claim for judicial review was brought by three asylum seeking claimants: HM represented by Gold Jennings, and KA and MH represented by Deighton Pierce Glynn. The Claimants, like thousands of others arriving by small boat, all…
Content type: News & Analysis
Background
Today judgment has been handed down in the landmark case of R (HM and MA and KH) v Secretary of State for the Home Department.
This is a Judicial Review decision concerning the UK Home Office’s secret and blanket policy of seizing mobile phones of all migrants who arrived to the UK by small boat between April 2020 and November 2020, and extracting data from all phones. PI was a third party intervener in the case.
The case revealed that migrants were searched on arrival at Tug Haven…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the midst of the atrocious war currently being waged by Russia on Ukraine, on 14 March 2022 Reuters reported that Clearview AI, the infamous online surveillance company, had offered its services to the Ukrainian defense ministry. A day later in an interview for TechCrunch, Ukraine's vice prime minister and minister for Digital Transformation confirmed that the partnership with Clearview AI was "currently in very early development".
Clearview is an online surveillance company that collects…
Content type: Explainer
Following sustained reporting by researchers, journalists and activists around the world, including recent disclosures exposed by the PegasusProject, the surveillance industry is facing scrutiny like never before.
In the latest move, eighteen U.S. lawmakers have today demanded that the U.S. government imposes sanctions on four non-US surveillance companies for, as they mention in their letter, facilitating “disappearance, torture and murder of human rights activists and journalists”.
The move…
Content type: News & Analysis
What if we told you that every photo of you, your family, and your friends posted on your social media or even your blog could be copied and saved indefinitely in a database with billions of images of other people, by a company you've never heard of? And what if we told you that this mass surveillance database was pitched to law enforcement and private companies across the world?
This is more or less the business model and aspiration of Clearview AI, a company that only received worldwide…
Content type: Press release
Today, following an in-depth investigation, the UK Competition and Market Authority (CMA) assessed that the competition concerns can only be addressed by Facebook selling Giphy in its entirety. This is a very significant decision. Facebook, the largest provider of social media sites and display advertising in the UK, acquired Giphy, the largest provider of GIFs. The merger would further increase Facebook’s dominance and Facebook would have benefitted from Giphy’s data collection practices and…
Content type: Video
<br />
Links
Daniel's petition: https://www.change.org/p/uk-parliament-ban-advertisers-from-targeting-eating-disorders
PI's diet ads report: https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/4603/unhealthy-diet-targeted-ads-investigation-how-diet-industry-exploits-our-data
More information on Instagram, targeted ads, and Frances Haugen - the Facebook whistleblower: https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/4622/reduce-facebooks-harms-teens-target-its-data-hungry-business-model…
Content type: Long Read
Zimbabwe has a history of state led surveillance that is carried out more for political gain than for the investigation of legitimate criminal activities. During former President Mugabe’s 37 year rule the government used laws and state security structures to carry out targeted surveillance of persons of political interest and more generalised mass surveillance of the population.
Specific laws such as the Interception of Communications Act as well as mandatory SIM-card registration regulations…
Content type: Video
<br />
You can find out more from Karisma here: https://web.karisma.org.co/
You can read the report here: https://web.karisma.org.co/useless-and-dangerous-a-critical-exploration-of-covid-applications-and-their-human-rights-impacts-in-colombia/
Content type: News & Analysis
Update: Based on the complaint, on 30 November 2021 the Ombudsman opened an inquiry into whether the European Commission failed to take into account human rights concerns or carry out human rights impact assessments before providing support to African countries to develop surveillance capabilities.
___
Privacy International (PI) together with a coalition of human rights groups have today called on the European Ombudsman, the EU’s oversight body, to investigate evidence that the block is…