News and Analysis

The UK Government introduced a draft surveillance bill on Wednesday – the innocuously named 'Investigatory Powers Bill'. Trumpeted as 'world leading' by the Home Secretary, the only sense in which this is true is that other Governments around the world will now also seek a mandate for mass

On legal reform "RIPA, obscure since its inception, has been patched up so many times as to make it incomprehensible to all but a tiny band of initiates. A multitude of alternative powers, some of them without statutory safeguards, confuse the picture further. This state of affairs is undemocratic

With powers to snoop on our communications that are unprecedented anywhere in the world, it is essential the Investigatory Powers Bill doesn't let politicians decide who is spied on. The bill, if it is passed, aims to give the police and intelligence agencies sweeping powers to scoop up our emails

This is a guest piece. It does not necessarily reflect the views or position of Privacy International. In 1997, plans for a Civil Identification Registry (RIC) were signed into law in Brazil, promising to unify the 27 regional identification registries into a centralized federal one by 2020. The law

Despite Wednesday's publication of the Investigatory Powers Bill being trailed as world leading legislation that would balance security and privacy, what the Government is actually seeking is a mandate for mass surveillance. This is a new Snoopers' Charter and we must oppose many of its most

Photo: Flickr/Elvert Barnes. Some rights reserved. In the wider civil society space, the opportunities for travel come thick and fast. From the multi-stakeholder perspective, the Internet Governance Forum will be held during November in João Pessoa, Brazil. There is the Stockholm Internet Forum in

According to Snowden documents analysed by Privacy International, the Australian Signals Directorate had access to and used PRISM, a secret US National Security Agency program which provides access to user data held by Google, Facebook and Microsoft. This is the third spy agency of the 'Five Eyes'

Privacy is a human right, and needs very clear legal protections. 'Safe Harbor' was clear as mud and placed privacy rights globally at risk. Today's European Court of Justice decision should be no surprise for industry or governments. For over fifteen years the U.S. Government has resisted

Today the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that mass surveillance is in violation of the right to privacy and that a legal system that provides no legal redress against interference with someone's privacy falls short of EU human rights standards. The Court was seized