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Content Type: Advocacy
We are responding to the UK Government's consultation to expand its powers around Technical Capabilities Notices and National Security Notices.
Background
Following Edward Snowden's revelations about the illegal and expansive secret powers of the US and UK intelligence agencies, the UK Government took the opportunity to, rather than reflect on what powers are proportionate in the modern era, to expand its arsenal of surveillance powers.
One of the powers it added was the ability to issue…
Content Type: News & Analysis
After almost 20 years of presence of the Allied Forces in Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement in February 2020 on the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. A few weeks before the final US troops were due to leave Afghanistan, the Taliban had already taken control of various main cities. They took over the capital, Kabul, on 15 August 2021, and on the same day the President of Afghanistan left the country.
As seen before with regime…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Samsung has announced that the company will commit to providing major software updates for three generations of the Android operating system, but only for its flagship models: the S10, S20, Note 10 and Note 20.
From our reading of the available information, this means that these models will be getting support, including the latest operating system, features and security updates, for three years (as new Android operating systems are released every year).
While this is welcome news, it only…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Lockdowns and quarantines are an extraordinary measure that help in slowing down the global COVID-19 pandemic, and protecting the population.
However, they come at an even higher cost to some individuals, such as victims of domestic violence, persons in a vulnerable situation, and human rights defenders, who face specific threats that are exacerbated by measures taken by governments to address the global pandemic.
In that context, states should adopt special measures to keep those people…
Content Type: Case Study
In Peru, you get asked for your fingerprint and your ID constantly - when you’re getting a new phone line installed or depositing money in your bank account – and every Peruvian person has an ID card, and is included in the National Registry of Identity – a huge database designed to prove that everyone is who they say they are. After all, you can change your name, but not your fingerprint.
However, in 2019 the National Police of Peru uncovered a criminal operation that was doing just that:…
Content Type: Long Read
Commercial interests seem to often overshadow the EU’s stance as a global privacy leader. After looking at Europes's shady funds to border forces in the Sahel area, Niger's new biometric voting system, and attempts to dismantle smugglers networks powered by Europe's gifts of surveillance, freelance journalist Giacomo Zandonini looks at the battle for data protection and digital rights in the continent.
What do a teenage labourer on a marijuana farm in Lesotho, a…
Content Type: News & Analysis
On 24 October 2019, the Swedish government submitted a new draft proposal to give its law enforcement broad hacking powers. On 18 November 2019, the Legal Council (“Lagråd”), an advisory body assessing the constitutionality of laws, approved the draft proposal.
Privacy International believes that even where governments conduct hacking in connection with legitimate activities, such as gathering evidence in a criminal investigation, they may struggle to demonstrate that hacking as…
Content Type: Long Read
Miguel Morachimo, Executive Director of Hiperderecho. Hiperderecho is a non-profit Peruvian organisation dedicated to facilitating public understanding and promoting respect for rights and freedoms in digital environments.
The original version of this article was published in Spanish on Hiperderecho's website.
Where does our feeling of insecurity come from? As we walk around our cities, we are being observed by security cameras most of the time. Our daily movement, call logs, and internet…
Content Type: Long Read
*Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash
The British government needs to provide assurances that MI5’s secret policy does not authorise people to commit serious human rights violations or cover up of such crimes
Privacy International, along Reprieve, the Committee on the Administration of Justice, and the Pat Finucane Centre, is challenging the secret policy of MI5 to authorise or enable its so called “agents” (not MI5 officials) to commit crimes here in the UK.
So far we have discovered…
Content Type: Advocacy
In this submission, Privacy International aims to provide the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights with information on how surveillance technologies are affecting the right to peaceful protests in new and often unregulated ways.
Based on Privacy International’s research, we provide observations, regarding the following:
the relationship between peaceful protests and the right to privacy;
the impact of new surveillance technologies in the context of peaceful protests…
Content Type: News & Analysis
A new UK Times report claims that “WhatsApp, Facebook and other social media platforms will be forced to disclose encrypted messages from suspected terrorists, paedophiles and other serious criminals under a new treaty between the UK and the US.”
Several other media outlets have followed up on the report, with headlines such as “UK and US set to sign treaty allowing UK police ‘back door’ access to WhatsApp and other ‘end to end encrypted’ messaging platforms”.
While the…
Content Type: Long Read
image from portal gda (cc)
Many people are still confused by what is 5G and what it means for them. With cities like London, New York or San Francisco now plastered with ads, talks about national security, and the deployment of 5G protocols being treated like an arms race, what happens to our privacy and security?
5G is the next generation of mobile networks, which is meant to be an evolution of the current 4G protocols that mobile providers have deployed over the last decade, and there are…
Content Type: Long Read
Whilst innovation in technology and data processing have provided individuals and communities with new opportunities to exercise their fundamental rights and freedoms, this has not come without risks, and these opportunities have not been enjoyed by all equally and freely.
Our relationships and interactions with governments and industry have become increasingly dependent on us providing more and more data and information about ourselves. And, it’s not only the information we provide knowingly…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Privacy International has joined a global coalition of privacy campaigners, tech companies, and technology experts to respond to proposals by British intelligence chiefs aimed at allowing them access to encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Signal.
If implemented, the proposals would allow government authorities to force messaging platforms to silently add a law enforcement participant to a group chat or call.
Such a capability poses serious threats to…
Content Type: Press release
Key Points
A new report by Privacy International and the International Committee of the Red Cross finds that the humanitarian sector’s use of digital and mobile technologies could have detrimental effects for people receiving humanitarian aid.
This is because these digital systems generate a ‘data trail’ that is accessible and exploitable by third parties for non-humanitarian purposes. This metadata can be used to infer extremely intimate details, such as someone’s travel patterns or…
Content Type: Report
New technologies continue to present great risks and opportunities for humanitarian action. To ensure that their use does not result in any harm, humanitarian organisations must develop and implement appropriate data protection standards, including robust risk assessments.
However, this requires a good understanding of what these technologies are, what risks are associated with their use, and how we can try to avoid or mitigate them. This joint report by Privacy International and the…
Content Type: Long Read
Image attribution: By Legaleagle86 at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0.
In a long-anticipated judgment, the Indian Supreme Court has ruled that India's controversial identification system Aadhaar is Constitutional. They based their conclusion on notes that there are sufficient measures in place to protect data, and that it is difficult to undertake surveillance of citizens on the basis of Aadhaar.
But there is some good in this ruling. The court has demanded that the Government introduce…
Content Type: Advocacy
Privacy and security are both essential to protecting individuals, including their autonomy and dignity. Undermining privacy undermines the security of individuals, their devices and the broader infrastructure. People need privacy to freely secure themselves, their information, and fully enjoy other rights.
A growing number of governments around the world are embracing hacking to facilitate their surveillance activities. When governments hack for surveillance purposes, they seek to…
Content Type: News & Analysis
We found the above image here.
Background
Email is hard to secure. For years we've been trying to build security on top of email, such as through technologies like Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and the open source implementation: GnuPG (GPG).
What happened
In the past 48 hours, there have been very scary looking reports recommending people switch off PGP in their email clients.
The TL;DR version of this post is:
PGP is not broken by this attack
You absolutely should not stop…
Content Type: News & Analysis
On a hot day in Nairobi, our researcher is speaking to an officer of Kenya’s National Intelligence Service (NIS). The afternoon is wearing on and the conversation has turned to the presidential elections, taking place in August this year. He has just finished describing the NIS’ highly secret surveillance powers and the disturbing ways in which these powers are deployed.
“It is what you might call ‘acceptable deaths,’” he states about the misuse of communications surveillance powers. “People…
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…
Content Type: Report
This investigation looks at how surveillance is being conducted in Thailand. The first part of the investigation focuses on the ties between telecommunication companies and the state, and the second part of the investigation focuses on attacks conducted in order to attempt to circumvent encryption.
Content Type: News & Analysis
A few weeks ago we wrote about a landmark opportunity the Mexican Supreme Court had to set a precedent by taking a strong stand against mass surveillance.
Last Wednesday, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court of Mexico came to a disappointing decision for the protection of privacy, and for democracy in Mexico, by rejecting to challenge of the mass, unregulated, unchecked data retention provision that currently exists under the Federal Telecommunications Act. The …
Content Type: Report
In this report we present four stories of Moroccan citizens placed under surveillance and the effect it has had on their lives and the lives of their families.
We feel that these stories say a lot about the current context of surveillance in Morocco. We hope they will serve as a medium to foster a much-needed public debate. We also hope that this debate will extend beyond Morocco as we all consider the dangers of unregulated surveillance and surveillance technology around the world.