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Content Type: News & Analysis
Privacy laws around the world are under threat by ambitious governments and voracious industry. Sixty-six privacy, digital rights and consumer rights organisations from around the world have joined forces to push back against attempts to weaken European privacy legislation. The coalition today wrote to the President of the European Commission (the civil service of the European Union) to demand that high levels of privacy protections must be respected in Europe's ongoing revision of its data…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The central premise of international intelligence cooperation is that states are able to both access valuable partner information to protect their national security, and focus their own resources elsewhere in a mutually beneficial way. But is it really a quid-pro-quo partnership?
As the Intercept recently revealed, German policy-makers certainly have reason to doubt that this would be the case. What Germany has learned, like many others before them, is that dependence on the…
Content Type: Report
Privacy International briefing for the Italian Government on Hacking Team's surveillance exports
Content Type: News & Analysis
Investigations by Privacy International in co-operation with VICE Motherboard, reveal that Hacking Team has sold its Remote Control System to the US Drug Enforcement Agency and US military via a front company based in the US.
The investigation catalogues what is known about Hacking Team’s intrusive spyware that can remotely switch on the microphone on mobile phones, activate webcams, as well as modify and/or extract data from the computer or phone itself. Whether the export was corrected…
Content Type: Press release
Privacy International and several other human rights organisations are taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over its mass surveillance practices, after a judgement last year found that collecting all internet traffic flowing in and out of the UK and bulk intelligence sharing with the United States was legal.
The appeal, filed last week by Privacy International, Bytes for All, Amnesty International, Liberty, and other partners, comes in response to a…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Following the successful adoption of the resolution to establish a UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, attention now turns to identifying highly qualified individuals for the position. All applicants must submit an application for the mandate through the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights online application system available here.
The deadline for receipt of nominations is 30 April 2015.
At the 29th session of the UN Human Rights Council (15 June – 3 July…
Content Type: Report
In this report we present four stories of Moroccan citizens placed under surveillance and the effect it has had on their lives and the lives of their families.
We feel that these stories say a lot about the current context of surveillance in Morocco. We hope they will serve as a medium to foster a much-needed public debate. We also hope that this debate will extend beyond Morocco as we all consider the dangers of unregulated surveillance and surveillance technology around the world.
Content Type: News & Analysis
Privacy International today is releasing a report about surveillance in Morocco, featuring four interviews with individuals who have been subjected to state surveillance. Stepping away from our traditional approach to documenting surveillance, we decided to give a platform to the people who have been targeted.
The interviews reveal a multi-layered oppressive system, where law enforcement agents film the keyhole of your door and interrogate your neighbours where; nationalist hacker groups get…
Content Type: Press release
The UN's top human rights body, the Human Rights Council, today has passed a landmark resolution endorsing the appointment of an independent expert on the right to privacy. For the first time in the UN's history, an individual will be appointed to monitor, investigate and report on privacy issues and alleged violations in States across the world.
The resolution, which appoints a Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy for an initial period of three years, was spearheaded by Germany and…
Content Type: Press release
Privacy International, Amnesty International, FIDH, the French League for Human Rights and Reporters Without Borders are alarmed by the expansive surveillance powers to be granted to surveillance agencies contained in a Bill transferred to the French parliament on Friday. Under the new law, French intelligence agencies would be empowered to hack into computers and devices and spy on the communications of anyone who makes contact with a person under suspicion, even incidentally. The new law will…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The French Government unveiled a new Bill that aims at providing a legal framework to intelligence services last Friday. While Privacy International welcomes the positive step of placing powers that were until now poorly regulated under the law, we remain alarmed by many aspects of this Bill. Two months after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris that targeted the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher supermarket, the Government seeks to provide the intelligence services with a…
Content Type: News & Analysis
German surveillance technology company Trovicor played a central role in expanding the Ethiopian government's communications surveillance capacities, according to a joint investigation by Privacy International and netzpolitik.org.
The company, formerly part of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), provided equipment to Ethiopia's National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) in 2011 and offered to massively expand the government's ability to intercept and store internet…
Content Type: Advocacy
On 20 March 2015, Privacy International and Open Rights Group submitted comments on the UK Government's draft Equipment Interference Code of Practice.
The UK has been hacking for over a decade, yet the release of the draft Code of Practice is the first time the UK intelligence services have sought public authorisation for their activities. Indeed, it is the first time the intelligence services have publicly acknowledged they engage in hacking.
Unfortunately, the draft Code of…
Content Type: Press release
The British Government has admitted its intelligence services have the broad power to hack into personal phones, computers, and communications networks, and claims they are legally justified to hack anyone, anywhere in the world, even if the target is not a threat to national security nor suspected of any crime.
These startling admissions come from a government court document published today by Privacy International. The document was filed by the government in response to two …
Content Type: News & Analysis
Today, on behalf of 92 human rights organisations around the world, an oral statement was delivered before the United Nations Human Rights Council, calling on the Council to establish a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy
Negotiations are on-going at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva for the establishment of a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy. If established, the Rapporteur will provide much-needed leadership and guidance on developing an understanding of…
Content Type: Press release
The UK Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee's report provides a long-awaited official confirmation that the British government is engaging in mass surveillance of communications. Far from allaying the public's concerns, the ISC's report should trouble every single person who uses a computer or mobile phone: it describes in great detail how the security services are intercepting billions of communications each day and interrogating those communications against thousands of…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This Sunday is International Women's Day. You could celebrate the considerable progress in legislating for women's equal rights. You could join a protest against political and legal inequality, discrepancies in women's access to healthcare, education and other social goods. You could thank your mom for delivering you.
Here at Privacy International, we want to commemorate the importance of this day by looking at some of the ways surveillance technologies can be used to control women and how the…
Content Type: News & Analysis
FREAK, the latest security vulnerability to be exposed that has implications for millions of supposedly secure websites, is just the most recent example of something privacy and security advocates have been saying for some time: when governments meddle with our security technologies, it hurts us all.
When the State advocates for backdoors into our communications, they cannot secure them properly and malicious actors can get in. When our elected officials pontificate about spying on us to…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The focus on the right to privacy continues at the United Nations, with Kenya, Turkey, and Sweden being recently challenged over their surveillance practices during the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review of States' human rights records.
The explicit mention of the right to privacy in recommendations submitted by Slovenia and the Netherlands during the review of Sweden, in the recommendation by Estonia during Turkey's review, and Liechtenstein's recommendations to…
Content Type: Press release
Privacy International today has launched a platform and campaign to allow anyone in the world to request whether Britain’s intelligence agency GCHQ has illegally spied on them.
The platform and campaign has been developed in response to a recent court ruling that GCHQ unlawfully obtained millions of private communications from the NSA up until December 2014. This decision allows not only British citizens, but anyone in the world, to ask GCHQ if the individual’s records…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Privacy International, Bytes for All and other human rights groups are celebrating a major victory against the Five Eyes today as the UK surveillance tribunal rules that GCHQ acted unlawfully in accessing millions of private communications collected by the NSA up until December 2014.
Today’s judgement represents a monumental leap forward in efforts to make intelligence agencies such as GCHQ and NSA accountable to the millions of individuals whose privacy they have violated.
The…
Content Type: Long Read
As Privacy International celebrates Friday's victory against Britain’s security services - the first such victory this century - we cannot help but feel the success is bittersweet.
After all, we may have convinced the Investigatory Powers Tribunal that GCHQ was acting unlawfully in accessing NSA databases filled with billions of emails and messages, but with a few technical adjustments the intelligence services have managed to insure themselves against any further challenge, at least in…
Content Type: Press release
British intelligence services acted unlawfully in accessing millions of people’s personal communications collected by the NSA, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled today. The decision marks the first time that the Tribunal, the only UK court empowered to oversee GHCQ, MI5 and MI6, has ever ruled against the intelligence and security services in its 15 year history.
The Tribunal declared that intelligence sharing between the United States and the…
Content Type: News & Analysis
A year after the Eyes Wide Open program was launched here at Privacy International, we are just beginning to scratch the surface of the processes and justifications that agencies like GCHQ use to make their spying legally compliant. Tocqueville, a great philosopher of law stated:
“If they prize freedom much, they generally value legality still more. They are less afraid of tyranny than of arbitrary power, and provided the legislature undertakes of itself to deprive men of their independence,…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Late last year, the newly-elected government of Indonesia began to take steps which are almost unheard of today: reforming government communications surveillance powers.
The much-needed development, on the back of the victory of President Joko Widodo, comes at a critical moment in the country's history as the relationships that Indonesians have with technology are changing and growing rapidly. A recent poll revealed that Indonesians consider technology to have had a mostly…
Content Type: Long Read
Modern day government surveillance is based on the simple concept of “more is more” and “bigger is better”. More emails, more text messages, more phone calls, more screenshots from Skype calls. The bigger the haystack, the more needles we can find.
Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that this fundamental idea drives intelligence agencies like the NSA and GCHQ - the desire to collect it all, to generate gigantic haystacks through which to trawl. In the almost two years since the first of Snowden…
Content Type: News & Analysis
UPDATE: Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has announced plans to disband Argentina's intelligence agency. Go here for more, and keep reading below.
This post was originally published on 20 January 2015 by Privacy International's partner in Argentina, the Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC). To read the original post, please go here.
In view of the serious incidents that took place on 18 January 2015, the Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC)…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Intelligence sharing agreements can be open and transparent. In fact, the Five Eyes have already disclosed information sharing agreements that relate to key international law enforcement and national security measures.
They’re called mutual legal assistance treaties, or MLATs, and they’ve existed between the Five Eyes, excluding New Zealand, for decades. MLATs define the scope of cooperation between States in criminal investigations: States share sensitive information in criminal…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The following was written by Mike Rispoli, Communications Manager at Privacy International, and appeared in the 'Journalism in Europe' discussion series, hosted by Central European University:
"The response by world leaders to the horrific terrorist attacks in France earlier this month has been all too familiar. As officials rallied for freedom of expression, they called for increased vigilance against extremists by expanding government surveillance powers.
Leading the way is UK Prime…
Content Type: News & Analysis
15 January 2015
The following op-ed appeared in openDemocracy, written by Edin Omanovic, Research Officer at Privacy International:
It's not surprising that some of the states in Central Asia spy on people. Authoritarianism across the world relies on the intrusion into, and lack thereof, of a private sphere. From the KGB to their modern incarnations, the autocracies in the region continue to rely on state surveillance and other entrenched means of political control to stay in power.
New…