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Content Type: Long Read
This week saw the release of a coronavirus tracking app within the United Kingdom, initially to be trialled in the Isle of Wight. Privacy International has been following this closely, along with other ‘track and trace’ apps like those seen in over 30 other countries.
The UK’s app is no different. It is a small part of a public health response to this pandemic. As with all the other apps, it is vital that it be integrated with a comprehensive healthcare response, prioritise people, and…
Content Type: Long Read
The pressing need to fix our cybersecurity (mis)understandings
Despite all the efforts made so far by different, cybersecurity remains a disputed concept. Some states are still approving cybersecurity laws as an excuse to increase their surveillance powers. Despite cybersecurity and cybercrime being different concepts, the confusion between them and the broad application of criminal statutes is still leading to the criminalise legitimate behaviour.
All of this represents a sizable challenge…
Content Type: Long Read
[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 facilitate the adoption of these measures, a plethora of bodies, groups and networks of governments and other interested private stakeholders develop norms, standards and ‘good practices’ which often end up…
Content Type: Long Read
In this piece we examine mobile phone extraction, relying on publicly available information and Privacy International’s experience from conducting mobile phone extraction using a Cellebrite UFED Touch 2. We welcome input from experts in the field. This is a rapidly developing area. Just as new security features are announced for phones, so too new methods to extract data are found.
[All references can be found in the pdf version below.]
General explanation of mobile phone…
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
Details of case:
R (on the application of Privacy International) (Appellant) v Investigatory Powers Tribunal and others (Respondents)
[2019] UKSC 22
15 May 2019
The judgment
What two questions was the Supreme Court asked to answer?
Whether section 67(8) of RIPA 2000 “ousts” the supervisory jurisdiction of the High Court to quash a judgment of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal for error of law?
Whether, and, if so, in accordance with what principles, Parliament may by…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Campaigners are today calling for urgent action to allow Palestinians to develop an independent telecommunications infrastructure following the release of a report detailing how the Israeli government exerts its existing control to rule and monitor the online lives of Palestinian people.
‘Connection Interrupted’, produced by Privacy International partner organisation 7amleh, describes how the Israeli government restricts key telecommunications infrastructure in Palestine,…