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Content Type: News & Analysis
As privacy and free expression advocates hail the demise of the Data Retention Directive at the hands of the European Court of Justice, one large question is looming in the midst of celebration.
Now what?
More specifically, what will be its impact of the national laws of the European Union countries? What steps should EU governments be taking to ensure the Court’s decision is given effect? What are the implications for communications service providers who have been…
Content Type: Press release
Britain's intelligence services do not need a warrant to receive unlimited bulk intelligence from the NSA and other foreign agencies, and can keep this data on a massive searchable database for up to two years, according to secret internal policies revealed today by human rights organisations.
Details of previously unknown internal policies, which GCHQ was forced to reveal during legal proceedings challenging their surveillance practices in the wake of the Snowden revelations, reveal…
Content Type: News & Analysis
A sizeable political controversy has engulfed President Goodluck Jonathan’s Government in Nigeria, where details surrounding its plans for the total surveillance of Africa’s most populous country continue to emerge.
Thanks to pervasive snooping technology readily found and developed in the US, UK, Israel and the Netherlands, the already spy-equipped security forces in Nigeria will have greater and more intimate access to the lives of some 56 million Internet users and 115 million active fixed…
Content Type: Long Read
Privacy International in October 2014 made a criminal complaint to the National Cyber Crime Unit of the National Crime Agency, urging the immediate investigation of the unlawful surveillance of three Bahraini activists living in the UK by Bahraini authorities using the intrusive malware FinFisher supplied by British company Gamma.
Moosa Abd-Ali Ali, Jaafar Al Hasabi and Saeed Al-Shehabi, three pro-democracy Bahraini activists who were granted asylum in the UK, suffered variously…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Jaafar Al Hasabi, Mohammed Moosa Abd-Ali Ali, and Saeed Al-Shehabi each fled Bahrain for the United Kingdom with one goal: to be safe.
These men, activists in the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain, were variously subject to torture, arbitrary detention, harassment, and psychological trauma in their home country. They thought coming to the UK, and living in exile, would at least mean they would be outside the reach of the Bahraini government.
Despite the nearly 4,000 miles between their homes…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Between 15th-19th of September, in the week leading up the first year aniversary of the 13 Necessary and Proportionate Principles, Privacy International and the coalition behind the 13 Principles will be conducting a Week of Action explaining some of the key guiding principles for surveillance law reform. Every day, we'll take on a different part of the principles, exploring what’s at stake and what we need to do to bring intelligence agencies and the police back under the rule of law. You can…
Content Type: Long Read
Bad analogies about surveillance technology pervade newspaper reports, politicians’ speeches, and legal arguments. While it’s natural to want simple explanations to understand complex technology, it does us a disservice when governments, the media, or the courts mislead us through analogies that are inadequate. It is even worse if these analogies are used as a basis for policy change.
Privacy International’s legal challenge against GCHQ’s mass surveillance rests…
Content Type: News & Analysis
In a disturbing move to broaden its mass surveillance powers, the government of Australia is pushing forward a bill that undermines fundamental rights, including the right to privacy. Disappointingly, this comes mere months after civil society and citizens alike expressed outrage over the Australian intelligence service’s offer to share deeply personal information about ordinary citizens with its Five Eyes partners.
The Bill, which amends the Australian…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The publishing of materials from a support server belonging to surveillance-industry giant Gamma International has provided a trove of information for technologists, security researchers and activists. This has given the world a direct insight into a tight-knit industry, which demands secrecy for themselves and their clients, but ultimately assists in the violation human rights of ordinary people without care or reproach.
Now for the first time, there is solid confirmation of Gamma's…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Last year, UK-based surveillance company Gamma TSE sold the Indonesian military US$ 6.7 million worth of equipment as part of the military's weapons modernisation effort. As early as 2005, Indonesian officials were soliciting the advice of a close partner of Gamma, Germany-based Elaman, to create technical surveillance unit (TSU), according to a white paper published as part of the WikiLeak SpyFiles and found in the Surveillance Industry Index.
Gamma and Elaman are…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This is a guest piece. It does not necessarily reflect the views or position of Privacy International
To open a bank account in Pakistan, to get a new driver license or passport or to activate a SIM card, you need to present a computerized national identity card. These cards are about more than just proving identity; they are essential to getting on with your day-to-day life.
So what happens when you lose your identity to fraud?
Pakistan is one of the few nations that has registered…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The following is an excerpt from an op-ed that appeared in the Daily Telegraph written by Carly Nyst, Legal Director of Privacy International:
One of the most shocking discoveries from Edward Snowden's disclosures was that GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, is tapping undersea cables to harvest the communications of people from all around the world. This top-secret programme, nicknamed Tempora, sucks up petabytes of data from tapped cables off the coast of Cornwall and is capable…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Today’s report on the right to privacy in the digital age by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, commissioned by the General Assembly in December 2013, marks an historic turning point in the international discourse around privacy and surveillance.
Privacy International believes the report will dramatically change the international conversation on the implications of surveillance and intelligence for human rights. Most importantly, it puts beyond doubt that the very existence of…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Despite having over three months to introduce legislation responding to the Court of Justice of the European Union striking down the Data Retention Directive , an 'emergency' surveillance bill is being rammed through Parliament this week.
Not only does the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (DRIP) fail to address the privacy concerns laid out in the Court's judgment, it also drastically expands spying powers of the State. Worringly, just this afternoon, the fast track…
Content Type: News & Analysis
From Monday 14 to Friday 18 July, the British intelligence agencies and the Ministers responsible for them will be under the spotlight in an historic case to determine whether GCHQ's mass communications surveillance activities are a violation of Britain's human rights obligations.
Privacy International, along with Amnesty International, Liberty, the American Civil Liberties Union, Pakistani organisation Bytes for All and others, have brought the case before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (…
Content Type: News & Analysis
We have learnt a lot in the last year about the dirty games GCHQ and NSA are playing to infiltrate the networks, tools and technologies we all use to communicate. This includes forcing companies to handover their customers’ data under secret orders, and secretly tapping fibre optic cablesbetween the same companies’ data centers.
Not content with that, we know now GCHQ are targeting companies systems administrators, exploiting the routers and switches in their networks to…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The European Union’s privacy and data protection laws are some of the strongest in the world. And the privacy-related activities of the last European Parliament (2009-2014) have been the most intense in its history. For half of its term it steered the highly-debated data protection law reforms, with a first plenary vote cast in the nick of time before it dissolved last April. And for the last year it dealt with the fallout of the mass surveillance revelations by Edward Snowden, which…
Content Type: News & Analysis
What do Egypt, Kenya, Turkey, Guinea, and Sweden have in common? Despite having a Constitutional right to privacy, they are adopting and enforcing policies that directly challenge this human right.
These states are also up for a Universal Periodic Review this year before the United Nations Human Rights Council. UPRs are a mechanism within the Council aimed at improving the human rights situation in all countries and address human rights violations wherever they occur.
Despite having…
Content Type: Advocacy
This stakeholder report is a submission by Privacy International (PI), Jonction and Stat View International. Privacy International is a human rights organisation that works to advance and promote the right to privacy and fight surveillance around the world. Jonction is a human rights organisation based in Dakar, Senegal, which aims to promote sustainable and equitable development as well as human rights across Africa but particularly in Senegal. Stat View International is a research-based…
Content Type: Advocacy
This stakeholder report is a submission by Privacy International (PI) and the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders in Kenya (NCHRD-K). PI is a human rights organisation that works to advance and promote the right to privacy around the world. NCHRD-K is a non-governmental organisation registered as a Trust in Kenya. It was established to strengthen the work of human rights defenders (HRDs) in the country by reducing their vulnerability to the risk of persecution and by enhancing their…
Content Type: Advocacy
This stakeholder report is a submission by Privacy International (PI). PI is a human rights organisation that works to advance and promote the right to privacy and fight surveillance around the world. PI wishes to bring concerns about the protection and promotion of the right to privacy in Turkey before the Human Rights Council for consideration in Turkey’s upcoming review.
Content Type: Advocacy
This stakeholder report is a submission by Privacy International (PI). PI is a human rights organisation that works to advance and promote the right to privacy and fight surveillance around the world. PI wishes to bring concerns about the protection and promotion of the right to privacy in Sweden before the Human Rights Council for consideration in Sweden’s upcoming Universal Periodic Review.
Content Type: Advocacy
What do Egypt, Kenya, Turkey, Guinea, and Sweden have in common? Despite having a Constitutional right to privacy, they are adopting and enforcing policies that directly challenge this human right.
These states are also up for a Universal Periodic Review this year before the United Nations Human Rights Council. UPRs are a mechanism within the Council aimed at improving the human rights situation in all countries and address human rights violations wherever they occur.
Despite having…
Content Type: Press release
Britain’s top counter-terrorism official has been forced to reveal a secret Government policy justifying the mass surveillance of every Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google user in the UK.
This disturbing policy was made public due to a legal challenge brought by Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, Pakistani organisation Bytes for All, and five other national civil liberties organisations[fn]Canadian Civil Liberties…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Earlier this month, only a few days before the new president of Egypt was sworn in, leaked documents from the Ministry of Interior revealed that the government is trying to acquire mass surveillance equipment capable of monitoring social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
While being billed as a way to monitor social media in order to “monitor security hazards in social networks” and “identify persons representing a danger on society” (sic), past and recent actions by…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The following is an excerpt from an Op-Ed written in the New Zealand Herald by Privacy International's Legal Officer Anna Crowe:
Since the release of documents by Edward Snowden nearly a year ago, New Zealand has often been seen as a passive participant in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, not unlike a good kid hanging out with the wrong crowd.
However, Snowden documents released last month and the news that New Zealand appears to be sharing intelligence…
Content Type: News & Analysis
In the coming year, the elections to be held in Nigeria, Indonesia, Turkey, Ethiopia, Mexico, and Tunisia will be closely watched. Not only will the international community be monitoring the elections, but domestic governments could be monitoring their own citizens at the ballot box.
When courageous citizens brave uncertain political and societal contexts to exercise one of their fundamental human rights - the right to vote - they will rely on another fundamental human right - privacy. Privacy…
Content Type: News & Analysis
3 June 2014
The following article written by Carly Nyst, Privacy International's Legal Director, originially appeared on the Future Tense blog on Slate:
The news that the CIA is no longer using vaccination programs as a front for spying operations may come as a relief to many humanitarian workers. Yet their fears should not be completely assuaged, because the CIA’s activities—which undoubtedly threatened the safety of humanitarian workers and those they seek to help—pale in…
Content Type: News & Analysis
While the initial disclosures by Edward Snowden revealed how US authorities are conducting mass surveillance on the world's communications, further reporting by the Guardian newspaper uncovered that UK intelligence services were just as involved in this global spying apparatus. Faced with the prospect of further public scrutiny and accountability, the UK Government gave the Guardian newspaper an ultimatum: hand over the classified documents or destroy them.
The Guardian decided that having the…