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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: Long Read
On 15th April Margaret Atwood, author of the Handmaid's Tale, gave an interview to BBC Radio 5 Live where she commented that ‘people may be making arrangements that aren’t too pleasant, but it’s not a deliberate totalitarianism’. You can read more about the interview in the Guardian.
While we agree with Margaret Atwood that we are not necessarily entering an era of "deliberate totalitarianism" we have written the following open letter (download link at the bottom of the page) to her as a ‘…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This op-ed originally appeared on the Atlantic Council's Disinfo Portal.
While these concerns are held by societies globally, Privacy International’s (PI) recent analysis shows that in jurisdictions where companies have been under pressure to act—by governments and institutions such as the EU, or civil society—they have adopted self-regulatory practices. But they have failed to apply this heightened transparency elsewhere.
The role of social media and search engine companies in…
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
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: Long Read
Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash
Digital identity providers
Around the world, we are seeing the growth of digital IDs, and companies looking to offer ways for people to prove their identity online and off. The UK is no exception; indeed, the trade body for the UK tech industry is calling for the development of a “digital identity ecosystem”, with private companies providing a key role. Having a role for private companies in this sector is not necessarily a problem: after all, …
Content Type: News & Analysis
The latest news of Twitter “inadvertently” sharing email addresses or phone numbers provided for safety or security purposes (for example, two-factor authentication) for advertising purposes is extremely concerning for several reasons.
First of all, it is not the first time for Twitter's used people's data in ways they wouldn't expect or that ignores their choices: in August, the company disclosed that it may have shared data on users with advertising partners, even if they had opted out from…