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Content Type: Video
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Episode notes
Useful info
How to minimise targeted ads: privacyinternational.org/act/minimise-targeted-ads
Protect yourself from online tracking: privacyinternational.org/act/protect-yourself-online-tracking
Social media account settings: privacyinternational.org/act/protect-…
Content Type: News & Analysis
In September 2019, PI published the report Your Mental Health for Sale. Our investigation looked into popular mental health websites and their data sharing practices.
Our findings suggest that, at the time of the research, most websites we looked at were using third party tracking for advertising purposes, sometimes relying on programmatic advertising technologies such as Real Time Bidding (RTB), sharing personal data with potentially thousands of actors. Some websites were also found sharing…
Content Type: Long Read
Introduction
In August 2019, when Facebook announced a few new features for advertisers such as ads in search, PI decided to take an in-depth look at what features the company offers its users when it comes to understanding its advertising practices. One of these features, which caught our attention is Facebook Ads Preference, a tool that among other things, lists businesses/advertisers that have uploaded your personal data to target you with (or exclude you from) ads on the platform.
Content Type: Report
Back in October 2019, PI started investigating advertisers who uploaded personal data to Facebook for targeted advertising purposes. We decided to take a look at "Advertisers Who Uploaded a Contact List With Your Information", a set of information that Facebook provides to users about advertisers who upload files containing their personal data (including unique identifier such as phone numbers, emails etc...). Looking at the limited and often inaccurate information provided by Facebook through…
Content Type: Video
Given everything that's happening at the moment around the world, we've decided to postpone our episode on ID in Kenya until next week.
You can listen and subscribe to the podcast where ever you normally find your podcasts:
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Some of the resources we mentioned in the episode can be found here:
ACLU: know your rights: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/protesters-…
Content Type: Advocacy
Last week, Privacy International joined more than 30 UK charities in a letter addressed to the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, following his recent declaration, asking him to lift No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) restrictions.
Since 2012, a ‘NRPF condition’ has been imposed on all migrants granted the legal right to live and work in the UK. They are required to pay taxes, but they are not permitted to access the public safety net funded by those taxes.
This is not a topic we are known…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Political campaigns around the world have turned into sophisticated data operations. They rely on data- your data- to facilitate a number of decisions: where to hold rallies, which States or constituencies to focus resources on, which campaign messages to focus on in which area, and how to target supporters, undecided voters, and non-supporters.
While data driven political campaigns are not new, the granularity of data available and the potential power to sway or suppress voters through that…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This week International Health Day was marked amidst a global pandemic which has impacted every region in the world. And it gives us a chance to reflect on how tech companies, governments, and international agencies are responding to Covid-19 through the use of data and tech.
All of them have been announcing measures to help contain or respond to the spread of the virus; but too many allow for unprecedented levels of data exploitation with unclear benefits, and raising so many red flags…
Content Type: Case Study
In Peru, you get asked for your fingerprint and your ID constantly - when you’re getting a new phone line installed or depositing money in your bank account – and every Peruvian person has an ID card, and is included in the National Registry of Identity – a huge database designed to prove that everyone is who they say they are. After all, you can change your name, but not your fingerprint.
However, in 2019 the National Police of Peru uncovered a criminal operation that was doing just that:…
Content Type: News & Analysis
On New Year's Day, the Twitter account @HindsightFiles began publishing internal communications and documents from the now defunct SCL Group, dating from 2014-2018. They came from the hard drive of Brittany Kaiser, who held several senior positions at SCL Group including at one of its subsidiaries, Cambridge Analytica, and featured in the Netflix documentary "The Great Hack".
Privacy International first investigated Cambridge Analytica in 2017. We questioned the company's role in the Kenyan…
Content Type: Long Read
We are excited to spotlight our Reproductive Rights and Privacy Project!
The Project is focused on researching and exposing organisations that collect and exploit the information of those seeking to exercise their reproductive rights. Working together with PI partners, other international grassroots organisations and NGOs, PI is researching and advocating against this data exploitation.
So, what are reproductive rights?
Sexual and reproductive rights, which are contained within Economic,…
Content Type: Advocacy
This stakeholder report is a submission by Privacy International (PI), the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders Kenya (NCHRD-K), The Kenya Legal & Ethical Issues Network on HIV and AIDS (KELIN), and Paradigm Initiative.
PI, NCHRD-K, KELIN, and Paradigm Initiative wish to bring their concerns about the protection and promotion of the right to privacy, and other rights and freedoms that privacy supports, for consideration in Kenya’s upcoming review at the 35th session of the Working…
Content Type: News & Analysis
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 becoming hard national laws…
Content Type: Advocacy
Privacy International's submission to the consultation initiated by the UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights on the impact on human rights of the proliferation of “soft law” instruments and related standard-setting initiatives and processes in the counter-terrorism context.
In this submission Privacy International notes its concerns that some of this “soft law” instruments have negative implications on the right to privacy leading to violations of other human…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Image: The Great Hack publicity still, courtesy of Netflix.
This is a review of the documentary 'The Great Hack' originally published on IMDb.
This documentary is a fascinating account of The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
In early 2018, Cambridge Analytica became a household name. The company had exploited the personal data of millions of Facebook users, without their knowledge or consent, and used it for political propaganda.
At a running time of almost two hours, The Great…
Content Type: Case Study
This time, Amtis travels to year 2030 to get a sense of how the data rights framework played out:
I just moved into a new apartment and everything was a mess. My stuff was all over the place and I couldn't find anything. I received a notification on my dashboard that a delivery drone had arrived with my package.
Data rights dashboard
The dashboard showed me a summary report with information about how my data was handled: which company processed my order, the type of data that was collected…
Content Type: Case Study
In this third leap to 2030, Amtis sees that people have created national data funds where citizens and governments together own the data that is being generated by sensors or by the services people use.
Here’s how Amtis lives this time:
Smart commuto-mobile
In the busiest parts of the city there are no more cars. There are only special lanes for drones, houndopacks – fast robots that run like dogs to deliver packages, and smart commuto-mobiles – slim electric booths where you can sit on your…
Content Type: Case Study
In this next leap to year 2030, Amtis lives the life of a data labourer, being paid wages for data inputs. Here’s how Amtis begins the story:
I am in my green pyjamas, but I can’t say for sure if it’s morning or evening. My eyes are red from staring at screens. I am discouraged and very tired. Of course, all these emotions and reactions are registered by my Playbour – my pocket-sized smart console that has basically become my entire life. It’s my connection to family, friends and the world; my…
Content Type: News & Analysis
We found this image here.
Today, a panel of competition experts, headed by Professor Jason Furman, the former chief economic adviser of in the Obama administration, confirmed that tech giants, like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft, do not face enough competition.
Significantly, the report finds that control over personal data by tech giants is one of the main causes preventing competition and ultimately innovation.
Privacy International's research has shown clear examples of…
Content Type: Video
Video courtesy of CPDP (https://www.cpdpconferences.org/)
What is the impact of online gender-based violence on survivors? What should be the role of companies in fighting this phenomenon? What is the link between the right to privacy? In this panel, which took place at CPDP in February 2019, academics, civil society and government representatives discuss the issue of online gender based violence with a privacy lens.
Chair: Gloria González Fuster, VUB -LSTS (BE)
Moderator: Valerie…
Content Type: Impact Case Study
What Happened
On 5 June 2013, The Guardian published the first in a series of documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, a whistleblower who had worked with the NSA. The documents revealed wide-ranging mass surveillance programs conducted by the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which capture the communications and data of hundreds of millions of people around the world. In addition to revealing the mass surveillance programs of the…
Content Type: Long Read
Written jointly by Privacy International and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
In a landmark decision earlier this month, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that one of the mass surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden violates the rights to privacy and freedom of expression. While the case challenges the U.K. government’s mass interception of internet traffic transiting its borders, the court’s judgment has broader implications for mass spying programs in Europe and…
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 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
[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: Advocacy
On 6 March 2018, Privacy International participated in an interactive dialogue with the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy at the 37th Ordinary Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. We highlighted the growing trend of governments embracing hacking to facilitate their surveillance activities, and recommended the development of a human rights analysis of government hacking for surveillance purposes, with the view to forming specific…
