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Content Type: Advocacy
Our submission focussed on the evolving impacts of (i) automated decision-making, (ii) the digitisation of social protection programmes, (iii) sensitive data-processing and (iv) assistive technologies in the experiences and rights of people with disabilities.
We called on the OHCHR to:
Examine the impact that growing digitisation and the use of new and emerging technologies across sectors has upon the rights of persons with disabilities;
Urge states to ensure that the deployment of digital…
Content Type: Advocacy
The submission provides PI’s information and analysis of some of the topics listed in the call. The widespread use of new technologies presents both opportunities and challenges for the protection of human rights, including the right to life and the right to privacy. PI believes that is essential that states take a human rights-centered approach in their use of these technologies, and ensure that their use is consistent with international human rights law. By doing so, states can ensure that…
Content Type: Advocacy
PI welcomes the opportunity to engage once again with the mandate by submitting comments, evidence, and recommendations to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Ms. Tlaleng Mofokeng. We hope that our input will contribute to the forthcoming report, “Digital innovation, technologies and the right to health”.
Technology has contributed significantly to the planning and delivery of health information, services and care. We have seen the use of data and technology across the healthcare…
Content Type: Advocacy
Read in English
Nosotros, las organizaciones de la sociedad civil y los individuos abajo firmantes, instamos al Banco Mundial y a otras organizaciones internacionales a que tomen medidas inmediatas para cesar las actividades que promueven modelos perjudiciales de sistemas de identificación digital (ID digital).
Los firmantes de esta carta se encuentran en diferentes países, trabajan con diversas comunidades y aportan una amplia gama de conocimientos. Entre este grupo, hay muchas…
Content Type: Advocacy
We, the undersigned civil society organizations and individuals, urge the World Bank and other international organizations to take immediate steps to cease activities that promote harmful models of digital identification systems (digital ID).
The signatories of this letter are located in different countries, work with diverse communities, and bring a wide range of expertise. Among this group, there are many shared concerns and similar experiences documenting the harmful impacts…
Content Type: Advocacy
Today, PI filed a complaint with the Forensic Science Regulator (FSR) in relation to quality and accuracy issues in satellite-enabled Global Positioning System (GPS) tags used for Electronic Monitoring of subjects released from immigration detention (GPS tags). We are concerned there may be systemic failures in relation to the quality of data extracted from tags, processed and interpreted for use in investigations and criminal prosecutions.
The GPS tags are used by the Home Office to…
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: Press release
To mark 10 years of the Home Office's hostile environment, a coalition of charities last night projected a vast message on the Home Office's Lunar House building in South London, to draw attention to Home Secretary Priti Patel's plans to GPS ankle tag thousands of migrants - a coercive, costly, and dehumanising measure.
As part of a week of events to mark 10 years of the "hostile environment", a set of policies designed to make life difficult for what…
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: Report
In Israel/Palestine, the Israeli government has been deploying biometrics, including cutting-edge facial recognition technology, in the name of counter-terrorism. The Israeli state routinely surveils and severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement using myriad technologies, including biometrics, which result in furthering the policies of systemic segregation. Since many Palestinians live under Israeli occupation, they have little control over the way their sensitive data is turned…
Content Type: Advocacy
This report is presented by TEDIC (Technology and Community Association) and Privacy International (PI). TEDIC is a non-governmental, non-profit organization, based in Asunción, that promotes and defends human rights on the Internet and extends its networking to Latin America. PI is a London based human rights organization that works globally at the intersection of modern technologies and rights.
TEDIC and PI wish to express some concerns about the protection and promotion of the right to…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Earlier this week, the UK Government announced that no immigration status checks will be carried out for migrants trying to register with their GP and get vaccinated. But temporary offers of safety are not enough to undo the decades of harm caused by policies that have embedded immigration controls into public services.
Years of charging migrants for healthcare and sharing patient data with the Home Office has eroded trust between migrant communities and the NHS. As a result, they might not…
Content Type: Advocacy
This letter is also available in Spanish.
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Pichai,
In the past few years, you have pioneered important transparency tools to help your platform users understand, learn about and contextualise the political advertising they see. We agree that advertiser verification processes and ad repositories are key safeguards against online manipulation and misinformation. However, we are saddened to observe that these benefits have not been equally distributed among your global…
Content Type: News & Analysis
A new report by the UN Working Group on mercenaries analyses the impact of the use of private military and security services in immigration and border management on the rights of migrants, and highlights the responsibilities of private actors in human rights abuses as well as lack of oversight and, ultimately, of accountability of the system.
Governments worldwide have prioritised an approach to immigration that criminalises the act of migration and focuses on security.
Today, borders are not…
Content Type: Case Study
Privacy matters. It matters when you’re walking the streets of your home town and when you’re fleeing your home in search of safety. It matters if you’re at a protest or if you’re in bed.
Our wellbeing in each of these instances depends on the protection of our privacy. No situation can be fully understood in isolation.
Unjustifiable intrusions on our privacy become a weapon to eradicate communities and prey upon refugees and asylum seekers, push people away from protests in fear of…
Content Type: Advocacy
Privacy International responded to the call for submissions on Zimbabwe’s Cyber Security and Data Protection Bill, 2019.
According to its Memorandum, the Bill seeks to “consolidate cyber related offences and provide for data protection with due regard to the Declaration of Rights under the Constitution and the public and national interest.” The Bill also proposes the establishment of a Cyber Security Centre and a Data Protection Authority.
In its submission, PI applauds the positive aspects…
Content Type: Case Study
The EU have been using foreign aid budgets, not to lift people out of poverty, but to export surveillance technologies used to repress people’s human rights all over the world.
A wave of anti-immigration fervour has swept across Europe in recent years. As leaders have come to power across Europe either on anti-immigration platforms or having to respond to an anti-immigration sentiment, the EU’s recent policies have been shaped by the drive to stop migration to Europe.
Surveillance…
Content Type: Advocacy
Last week, Privacy International joined more than 30 UK charities in a letter addressed to the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, following his recent declaration, asking him to lift No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) restrictions.
Since 2012, a ‘NRPF condition’ has been imposed on all migrants granted the legal right to live and work in the UK. They are required to pay taxes, but they are not permitted to access the public safety net funded by those taxes.
This is not a topic we are known…
Content Type: Report
SUMMARY
In the UK, local authorities* are looking at people’s social media accounts, such as Facebook, as part of their intelligence gathering and investigation tactics in areas such as council tax payments, children’s services, benefits and monitoring protests and demonstrations.
In some cases, local authorities will go so far as to use such information to make accusations of fraud and withhold urgently needed support from families who are living in extreme poverty.
THE PROBLEM
Since 2011…
Content Type: Long Read
On 12 April 2020, citing confidential documents, the Guardian reported Palantir would be involved in a Covid-19 data project which "includes large volumes of data pertaining to individuals, including protected health information, Covid-19 test results, the contents of people’s calls to the NHS health advice line 111 and clinical information about those in intensive care".
It cited a Whitehall source "alarmed at the “unprecedented” amounts of confidential health information being swept up in the…
Content Type: Case Study
Since August 2017 742,000 Rohingya people - including children - fled across the Myanmar border to Bangladesh, escaping what the UN labelled a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
In this context of ethnoreligious violence, Facebook has been a central figure. For many in Myanmar “Facebook is the internet” - as of January 2018 around 19 million people in Myanmar were facebook users, this is roughly equal to the number of internet users in the country.
A New York Times report revealed that…
Content Type: Case Study
The right to privacy is crucial to protect a couple’s equal rights within marriage.
The recent rise of spyware as an “off-the-shelf” product that anyone can purchase has been extremely worrying, as installing spyware on someone else’s phone means getting access to their contacts, their messages, their google searches, their location and more - all without them knowing.
Spyware is, increasingly, becoming another way for abusive spouses to control and monitor their partners. Nearly a third of…
Content Type: Case Study
There are 29.4 million refugees and asylum seekers across the globe today. These are people who have fled their countries due to conflict, violence or persecution seeking protection in safer environments.
People have protected those in need fleeing from dire situations since antiquity. However, over recent years, European countries have become increasingly hostile towards refugees - treating them as criminals instead of people in need.
In 2017, German authorities passed a…
Content Type: Case Study
The increasing deployment of highly intrusive technologies in public and private spaces such as facial recognition technologies (FRT) threaten to impair our freedom of movement. These systems track and monitor millions of people without any regulation or oversight.
Tens of thousands of people pass through the Kings Cross Estate in London every day. Since 2015, Argent - the group that runs the Kings Cross Estate - were using FRT to track all of those people.
Police authorities rushed in secret…
Content Type: Case Study
In 2015, James Bates was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Victor Collins. Collins was found floating face down in Bates’ hot tub in November 2015. Bentonville police served two search warrants ordering Amazon to turn over the “electronic data in the form of audio recordings, transcribed records, text records and other data contained on the Amazon Echo device” in Bates’ home.
The reason for the warrants? According to the police, just because the device was in the house that…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This piece was originally published by Unwanted Witness here.
Today marks exactly one year since Uganda passed its data protection law, becoming the first East African country to recognize privacy as a fundamental human right, as enshrined in Art 27 of the 1995 Uganda Constitution as well as in regional and International laws.
The Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 aims to protect individuals and their personal data by regulating processing of personal information by state and non-state…
Content Type: Long Read
Background
Kenya’s National Integrated Identity Management Scheme (NIIMS) is a biometric database of the Kenyan population, that will eventually be used to give every person in the country a unique “Huduma Namba” for accessing services. This system has the aim of being the “single point of truth”, a biometric population register of every citizen and resident in the country, that then links to multiple databases across government and, potentially, the private sector.
NIIMS was introduced…
Content Type: Case Study
Anyone who is arrested should be informed of the reasons for their arrest and any charges against them. Anyone who is detained is also entitled to a trial within a reasonable time, or to be released if no charges are held against them.
Privacy enhances these protections. It provides limitations on the manner in which information can be obtained about you, and the kind of information that can be accessed about you by law enforcement, who can access that information and how they can use it.…
Content Type: Long Read
This piece was written by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon, who are policy officers at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in India. The piece was originally published on the website Economic Policy Weekly India here.
In order to bring out certain conceptual and procedural problems with health monitoring in the Indian context, this article posits health monitoring as surveillance and not merely as a “data problem.” Casting a critical feminist lens, the historicity of surveillance practices…
Content Type: Long Read
We are excited to spotlight our Reproductive Rights and Privacy Project!
The Project is focused on researching and exposing organisations that collect and exploit the information of those seeking to exercise their reproductive rights. Working together with PI partners, other international grassroots organisations and NGOs, PI is researching and advocating against this data exploitation.
So, what are reproductive rights?
Sexual and reproductive rights, which are contained within Economic,…