[Photo credit: Images Money] The global counter-terrorism agenda is driven by a group of powerful governments and industry with a vested political and economic interest in pushing for security solutions that increasingly rely on surveillance technologies at the expenses of human rights. To
Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash Digital identity providers Around the world, we are seeing the growth of digital IDs, and companies looking to offer ways for people to prove their identity online and off. The UK is no exception; indeed, the trade body for the UK tech industry is calling for the
Photo by Francesco Bellina The wars on terror and migration have seen international funders sponsoring numerous border control missions across the Sahel region of Africa. Many of these rely on funds supposed to be reserved for development aid and lack vital transparency safeguards. In the first of a
The UK government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, along with Government Digital Services, made a Call for Evidence on Digital Identity. In our response, Privacy International reiterated the need for a digital identity system to have a clear purpose, in this case to enable people
The global counter-terrorism agenda is driven by a group of powerful governments and industry with a vested political and economic interest in pushing for security solutions that increasingly rely on surveillance technologies at the expenses of human rights. To facilitate the adoption of these
Privacy International's submission to the consultation initiated by the UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights on the impact on human rights of the proliferation of “soft law” instruments and related standard-setting initiatives and processes in the counter-terrorism context. In
The Irish Data Protection Commissioner has made a ruling on the controversial Public Services Card (PSC) that has described much of what is is done with the card as unlawful. The PSC has proven controversial: introduced in 2012 for welfare claimants, it's use expanded to more and more uses
In February 2019 Gemalto announced it would supply the Uganda Police Force with its Cogent Automated Biometric Identification System and LiveScan technology in order to improve crime-solving. LiveScan enables police to capture biometric data alongside mugshots and biographical data. CABIS speeds up
In November 2018, Italy's Data Protection Authority advised against a proposal from the country's Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, to replace "parent 1 and parent 2" on children's national ID cards with "mother and father". Salvini, who campaigned for election earlier in 2018 on a socially
In November 2016 the UK Information Commissioner's Office issued an enforcement notice against London's Metropolitan Police, finding that there had been multiple and serious breaches of data protection law in the organisation's use of the Gangs Violence Matrix, which it had operated since 2012. The
As early as 2008, the Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE began helping Venezuela develop a system similar to the identity system used in China to track social, political, and economic behaviour. By 2018, Venezuela was rolling out its "carnet de la patria", a smart-card "fatherland" ID card that
After an 18-month investigation involving interviews with 160 life insurance companies, in January 2019 New York Financial Services, the state's top financial regulator, announced it would allow life insurers to use data from social media and other non-traditional sources to set premium rates for
In February 2019, the World Food Programme, a United Nations aid agency, announced a five-year, $45 million partnership with the data analytics company Palantir. WFP, the world's largest humanitarian organisation focusing on hunger and food security, hoped that Palantir, better known for partnering
Image credit: Emil Sjöblom [ ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)] Prepaid SIM card use and mandatory SIM card registration laws are especially widespread in countries in Africa: these two factors can allow for a more pervasive system of mass surveillance of people who can access prepaid SIM cards
By Valentina Pavel, PI Mozilla-Ford Fellow, 2018-2019 Our digital environment is changing, fast. Nobody knows exactly what it’ll look like in five to ten years’ time, but we know that how we produce and share our data will change where we end up. We have to decide how to protect, enhance, and
This blogpost is a preview of the full ' Our Data Future' story, produced by Valentina Pavel, PI Mozilla-Ford Fellow, 2018-2019. 2030. Four worlds. One choice. Which one is yours? All aboard! Time to step into the imaginarium. Explore four speculative future scenarios, examining how different ways
