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Content Type: Impact Case Study
What is the problem
For over two decades we have been documenting an alarming use and spread of surveillance. It is no longer just the wars on terror or drugs or migration that is driving this trend. The management of health crises and distribution of welfare regularly are among others being used to justify this turn to increasingly invasive forms of surveillance. From country to country we see the same ideas and the same profiteers expanding their reach.
When we first released our report on…
Content Type: Impact Case Study
What is the problem
Business models of lots of companies is based on data exploitation. Big Tech companies such Google, Amazon, Facebook; data brokers; online services; apps and many others collect, use and share huge amounts of data about us, frequently without our explicit consent of knowledge. Using implicit attributes of low-cost devices, their ‘free’ services or apps and other sources, they create unmatched tracking and targeting capabilities which are being used against us.
Why it is…
Content Type: Impact Case Study
What happened
In the aftermath of 9/11, Governments across the world rushed to legislate to expand surveillance. Governments
Moved to limit debate and reduce consultations as they legislated with speed.
Created new systems to collect data on all travellers, for the purpose of profiling and risk scoring.
Expanded identity schemes, and began demanding biometrics, particularly at borders.
Developed financial surveillance mechanisms on an unprecedented scale.
What we did
Few non-…
Content Type: Impact Case Study
What happened
Governments continuously seek to expand their communications surveillance powers. In the 1990s it was in the context of applying telephone surveillance laws to the internet. In the 2000s a spate of new laws arrived in response to 9/11. Expansions were then sought to monitor over-the-top services within the framing of Web 2.0. Then in the post-Snowden environment Governments rushed to legislate their previously secret powers.
What we did
We…
Content Type: Impact Case Study
What is the problem
In the 1990s privacy was often maligned as a ‘rich Westerner’s right’. We were told often that non-Westerners didn’t need privacy and had different cultural attitudes and would greet surveillance policies and technologies — often exported from the West.
Global civil society was composed mostly of a few individuals with no resources but great passion. The larger and more established NGOs, such as consumer and human rights organisations were less interested in ‘digital’ and ‘…
Content Type: Impact Case Study
What happened
Since the late 1980s governments across the world have been trying to build identity registries. By the early 1990s, there were similar policies being pursued by a number of governments across the Pacific region, with similar technologies from the same companies. In the mid-90s ID cards became a ‘modern’ policy, implementing smart cards. By 9/11 biometric IDs became the preferred solution to undefinable problems. Then came vast databases of biometrics to identify people — with…
Content Type: Impact Case Study
[Photo By Ludovic Courtès - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0] Last update: 14 December 2022What is the problem and why it is importantUntil the early '10s, the right to privacy had been sidelined and largely unaddressed within the UN human rights monitoring mechanisms, despite being upheld as a fundamental human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).Beyond the ICCPR General Comment No.16: Article 17 (…
Content Type: Impact Case Study
What happened
Strong and effective data protection law is a necessary safeguard against industry and governments' quest to exploit our data. A once-in-a-generation moment arose to reform the global standard on data protection law when the European Union decided to create a new legal regime. PI had to fight to ensure it wasn't a moment where governments and industry would collude to reduce protections.
In January 2012, the European Commission published a proposal to comprehensively reform…
Content Type: Long Read
TO TAKE PART IN OUR CAMPAIGN, RIGHT CLICK ON THE PICTURES BELOW, SAVE THEM, AND SHARE THEM ON SOCIAL MEDIA TAGGED #SPYPOLICE
Have you ever been to a peaceful protest, demo or march? Did you assume that the police would only be identifying 'troublemakers'? How would you feel if just by turning up at a peaceful protest, the police automatically identified you, without your consent or knowledge, and stored personal information about you (including photographs of your face) in a secret database?…
Content Type: Call to Action
Support our campaign against unregulated police surveillance technology by sharing our #spypolice posters on social media
Take part in our #spypolice campaign!
Content Type: Advocacy
India has been leading at developing some of the most complex and intense data-intensive systems in the world as exemplified with their mass biometric identification system, known as Aadhaar, as well as in the development and design of new technologies. To find out more about the main privacy issues in India, check out the State of Privacy in India.
And yet, India does not have a comprehensive privacy legislation and only limited data protection standards can be found under section 43A and…
Content Type: Press release
Below is a joint statement from Privacy International and Bytes for All.
This Friday, 27 September, marks the conclusion of the 24th session of the UN Human Rights Council, a session which has, for the first time, seen issues of internet surveillance in the spotlight. Privacy International and Bytes for All welcome the attention given at the Human Rights Council to this issue. However, we are concerned about developments which took place that threaten privacy rights and freedom of…
Content Type: Press release
The Case
Privacy International v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs et al. (Bulk Personal Datasets & Bulk Communications Data challenge)
Date: 5-9 June 2017
Time: from 10:00 onwards
Location: Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand, London WC2A 2LL United Kingdom
Hearing overview
Next week’s hearing follows the Investigatory Powers Tribunal’s earlier judgment in October 2016, which ruled that three issues are to be determined:
…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This post was written by Chair Emeritus of PI’s Board of Trustees, Anna Fielder.
The UK Data Protection Bill is currently making its way through the genteel debates of the House of Lords. We at Privacy International welcome its stated intent to provide a holistic regime for the protection of personal information and to set the “gold standard on data protection”. To make that promise a reality, one of the commitments in this government’s ‘statement of intent’ was to enhance…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This post was written by PI Policy Officer Lucy Purdon.
In 1956, US Presidential hopeful Adlai Stevenson remarked that the hardest part of any political campaign is how to win without proving you are unworthy of winning. Political campaigning has always been a messy affair and now the online space is where elections are truly won and lost. Highly targeted campaign messages and adverts flood online searches and social media feeds. Click, share, repeat; this is what political engagement looks…
Content Type: News & Analysis
20 June 2016
Privacy International joins DRF and A19 in reiterating our serious concerns about the proposed Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill which is currently being discussed in the Senate in Pakistan. While we note that the Bill adopted by the National Assembly in April 2016 includes some improvements compared to the earlier version, the Bill as currently drafted introduces a series of new provisions that pose a grave risk to freedom of expression and privacy in Pakistan…
Content Type: News & Analysis
7 July 2016
It has been said is that we pay for free services with our personal data. Now, the Privacy Shield exponentially expands this truth and we are paying for the cost of U.S. political dysfunction combined with EU complacency with our privacy. More than four months after the first EU-US Privacy Shield was published on 29 February 2016, a new version has been leaked. Remarkably, it is expected to be adopted.
Four months, two opinions by group of EU data protection…
Content Type: News & Analysis
7 July 2017
War profiteers are finding the data business easy going. The have wielded their unwarranted influence and applied their business model of causing and then profiting from insecurity and applied it to the digital age; the results have been more profit for them and less liberty for you.
When a politician riles against an evil tech giant for providing ‘safe spaces’ online, it’s a political distraction. The real battle for your data is being fought between the emergent tech…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Early on Wednesday morning the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill was approved by Pakistan’s National Assembly. The Bill, which is almost universally acknowledged as “controversial” had been criticised by opposition members, industry and civil society at numerous stages. Civil society organisations from around the world released two joint statements in April and December last year expressing their concerns. Despite the chorus of criticism, very little has changed in the Bill during its…
Content Type: Press release
Key points
Privacy International has obtained previously unseen government documents that reveal British spy agency GCHQ collects social media information on potentially millions of people.
GCHQ collected and accesses this information by gaining access to private companies’ databases.
Letters obtained by Privacy International reveal that the body tasked with overseeing intelligence agencies’ activities (the Investigatory Powers Commissioner) was kept in the dark as UK intelligence…
Content Type: Press release
In today’s latest hearing in our ongoing legal challenge against the collection of massive troves of our personal data by the UK intelligence agencies, shocking new evidence has emerged about GCHQ’s attempts to yet again avoid proper independent scrutiny for its deeply intrusive surveillance activities.
In a truly breath-taking exchange of letters between the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (“IPCO”) and the Director of Legal Affairs at GCHQ, it has emerged that GCHQ have…
Content Type: Press release
The European Court of Human Rights will hear a landmark case on surveillance tomorrow (7 November) as part of a challenge to the lawfulness of the UK’s surveillance laws and its intelligence agencies’ mass surveillance practices.
See the attached briefing for case background and historical information.
The case, described by campaigners as a “watershed moment for people’s privacy and freedom of expression across the world”, is being brought by Amnesty International, Liberty, Privacy…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Ask people around you if they live in a smart city, and more likely than not they will answer that they don’t. I can tell you that because I have tried.
When giving talks about this very topic in cities like Berlin, The Hague and Stockholm, I always ask this question at the start. The rough ratio I tend to get is that: 15 per cent hesitantly raise their hand to say they do, 60 per cent don’t, 20 per cent just look confused and 5 per cent are not listening.
And yet most people who live in cities…
Content Type: Press release
On 5 October 2017, Privacy International will appear before the UK Court of Appeal to continue its challenge to the British government's large scale hacking powers. The case questions the decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) to sanction the UK government's power to hack broad categories of people or property without any individualised suspicion.
TIMELINE AND KEY POINTS
- Privacy International began fighting bulk government hacking in 2014 at the…