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Content Type: Report
Financial services are changing, with technology being a key driver. It is affecting the nature of financial services, from credit and lending through to insurance, and even the future of money itself.
The field of fintech is where the attention and investment is flowing. Within it, new sources of data are being used by existing institutions and new entrants. They are using new forms of data analysis.
These changes are significant to this sector and the lives of people it serves. This…
Content Type: Report
The smart city market is booming. National and local governments all over the world expect their cities to become more efficient, more sustainable, cleaner and safer by integrating technology, increasing data generation and centralising data to provide better services. From large multinationals to small start-ups, companies want their slice of the multi-billion dollars per year pie of municipal budgets and long-term government contracts.
But do smart cities even exist? And are our cities…
Content Type: Report
In this paper, Privacy International explores* what it means to be secure, and how governments and companies enact policies and laws that undermine security globally. Good cyber security policies and practices put people and their rights at the centre. By prioritising the individual and protecting people, devices and networks, governments could take advantage of a real opportunity - to give something technically complex a human element. In short, giving the tin man a heart.
*This…
Content Type: Long Read
6 July 2017
Full briefing: UK-US Intelligence Sharing Arrangements
Urgent transparency is needed regarding the UK’s intelligence sharing arrangements with the United States, which allows UK and US agencies to share, by default, any raw intelligence and methods and techniques related to the acquisition of such intelligence. In a recent YouGov poll, three quarters of Britons said that they want the UK Government to tell the public what safeguards govern these arrangements. Privacy…
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: State of Privacy
Introduction
Acknowledgment
The State of Surveillance in Thailand is the result of a collaboration by Privacy International and Thai Netizen Network.
Right to Privacy
The constitution
Thailand experienced a coup d'etat in May 2014. According to Mishari Muqbil and Arthit Suriyawongkul, “their [the junta's] modus operandi seems to be the direct command of ministries and semi-governmental organisations to carry out tasks irrespective of existing legislation.”
Following…
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: Long Read
In July 2015, representatives of a private company met in a parking lot in Pretoria, South Africa to sell phone tapping technology to an interested private buyer. What they did not know was that this buyer was a police officer. The police had been tipped off that the company was looking to offload the surveillance technology, an IMSI catcher, to anyone who would buy it. It is illegal to operate such surveillance technology as a private citizen in South Africa, and illegal to buy…
Content Type: Report
Privacy International’s investigation contains evidence of the Syrian government’s ambitious plans and projects to monitor the national communications infrastructure, the technical details of which are revealed for the first time. Hundreds of original documents also highlight surveillance trade in this region leading up to and during the Arab Spring, which involved companies from around the world.
Content Type: Long Read
This report examines the emergence of social media based surveillance in Thailand, carried out potentially by people’s own networks of friends and family. It looks at the severe impact this has on personal privacy and points to potential solutions.
In May 2014, Thailand experienced a military coup – its second in eight years. A military government led by General Prayut Chan-o-cha seized power and overthrew the administration of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. The Army declared martial…
Content Type: Report
Privacy International's new investigation (available in English and in Arabic), 'THE PRESIDENT'S MEN? Inside the Technical Research Department', sheds light on the Technical Research Department, a secret unit of the Egyptian intelligence infrastructure that has purchased surveillance equipment from German/Finnish manufacturer of monitoring centres for telecommunication surveillance, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Italian malware manufacturer, Hacking Team.
Content Type: Report
Privacy International's new report, For God and My President: State Surveillance in Uganda, exposes the secret surveillance operation and the government's attempts to buy further powerful surveillance tools, including a national communications monitoring centre and intrusion malware, in the absence of a rigorous legal framework governing communications surveillance
Content Type: Long Read
We hate to say we told you so.
Privacy International has for years warned that powerful surveillance technologies are used to facilitate serious human rights abuses with insufficient technological and legal safeguards against abuse.
We now have the most solid evidence to date that we were right. Our latest investigation uncovers disturbing evidence that substantiates our long held concerns.
Today Privacy International publishes an investigation (PDF) into communications surveillance in…
Content Type: Report
Over a dozen international companies are supplying powerful communications surveillance technology in Colombia. Privacy International examines the actors across the world involved in facilitating state surveillance.
The report is available in English and Spanish.
Content Type: Report
For nearly two decades, the Colombian government has been expanding its capacity to spy on the private communications of its citizens. Privacy International's investigation reveals the state of Colombia's overlapping, unchecked systems of surveillance, including mass surveillance, that are vulnerable to abuse.
See the report in English and Spanish.
Content Type: Report
New technologies may hold great benefits for the developing world, but without strong legal frameworks ensuring that rights are adequately protected, they pose serious threats to populations they are supposed to empower.
This is never more evident than with the rapid and widespread implementation of biometric technology. Whilst concerns and challenges are seen in both developed and developing countries when it comes to biometrics, for the latter they are more acute due the absence of laws or…
Content Type: Report
This report was submitted to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Under the current version of the draft Communications Data Bill, records of every person or entity with whom any given individual has communicated electronically would be collected continuously and stored for one year. These records would include the time of the communication and the location from which it originated.
The Communications Data Bill raises a number of concerns with regards to the right to privacy under Article 8 of…
Content Type: Report
This report is the result of research conducted by researchers at Privacy International, coordinated by the London School of Economics and Political Science. The report was commissioned by the International Development Research Centre.
New technologies such as mobile phones and electronic medical record (EMR) systems promise to transform the provision and management of medicine all over the world. In the U.S. alone, billions are being spent on information technologies for healthcare.
Content Type: Report
Following on from their 2009 discussion paper, in 2010 the European Commission published a Communication on changes to the 1995 European Union Directive on data protection. The European Union’s 1995 Directive on data protection is a leading regional instrument for privacy and is often the model for other countries across the globe. The Directive has been integral to pushing back against key surveillance and tracking initiaitives by governments and industry.
In this report we respond to that…
Content Type: Report
This report has been prepared by Privacy International following a six-month investigation into the privacy practices of key Internet based companies. The ranking lists the best and the worst performers both in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 across the full spectrum of search, email, e-commerce and social networking sites.
The analysis employs a methodology comprising around twenty core parameters. We rank the major Internet players but we also discuss examples of best and worst privacy practice among…
Content Type: Report
This report investigates the probable effect of the proposed UK national Identity Card system on people who are marginalised, who suffer social disadvantage or exclusion, and those who are disabled. The work focuses on the biometrics element of the government’s proposals (specifically facial recognition, ngerprinting and iris scanning).
The Report provides a specific assessment of the recently published biometrics trial conducted by the UK Passport Service (UKPS), and compares these…
Content Type: Report
Proposals for identity (ID) cards have provoked public outrage and political division in several countries. In this paper Simon Davies analyses the key elements of public opposition to ID Card schemes, and profiles the massive 1987 Australian campaign against a national ID card.