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Content type: Examples
After an 18-month investigation involving interviews with 160 life insurance companies, in January 2019 New York Financial Services, the state's top financial regulator, announced it would allow life insurers to use data from social media and other non-traditional sources to set premium rates for its customers. Insurers will be required to demonstrate that their use of the information doesn't unfairly discriminate against specific customers. New York is the first state to issue specific…
Content type: Examples
In February 2019, the World Food Programme, a United Nations aid agency, announced a five-year, $45 million partnership with the data analytics company Palantir. WFP, the world's largest humanitarian organisation focusing on hunger and food security, hoped that Palantir, better known for partnering with police and surveillance agencies, could help analyse large amounts of data to create new insights from the data WFP collects from the 90 million people in 80 countries to whom it distributes 3…
Content type: Long Read
Image credit: Emil Sjöblom [ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)]
Prepaid SIM card use and mandatory SIM card registration laws are especially widespread in countries in Africa: these two factors can allow for a more pervasive system of mass surveillance of people who can access prepaid SIM cards, as well as exclusion from important civic spaces, social networks, and education and health care for people who cannot.
Mandatory SIM card registration laws require that people provide personal…
Content type: Long Read
Photo By: Cpl. Joel Abshier
‘Biometrics’ describes the physiological and behavioural characteristics of individuals. This could be fingerprints, voice, face, retina and iris patterns, hand geometry, gait or DNA profiles. Because biometric data is particularly sensitive and revealing of individual’s characteristics and identity, it can be applied in a massive number of ways – and has the potential to be gravely abused.
Identification systems across the world increasingly rely on…
Content type: News & Analysis
In July 2019, the UK House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee published a report on Digital Government. Lying not so subtlely amongst it's recommendations is this: "The Government should facilitate a national debate on single unique identifiers for citizens to use for accessing public services along with the right of the citizen to know exactly what the Government is doing with their data."
It's been pointed out that this is basically some of the worst features of an ID card…
Content type: Advocacy
Refugees are among the most vulnerable people in the world. From the moment they flee their homes, as they pass through 'temporary' places such as refugee camps and detention centres to their 'final' destinations, they are continuously exposed to threats. In the digital age, these threats are increasingly being driven by the processing of vast amounts of highly sensitive personal data: from enrollment and registration processes needed for them to access services, to their identification and…
Content type: Examples
In February 2019, an anonymous tip-off to Computer Sweden revealed that a database containing recordings of 170,000 hours of calls made to the Vårdguiden 1177 non-emergency healthcare advice line was left without encryption or password protection on an open web server provided by Voice Integrate Nordic AB. After the breach was discovered, MedHelp, which runs the 1177 service, shut the server down and found that 55 call files had been illegally downloaded from seven different IP addresses. Nine…
Content type: Examples
In Ireland benefits claimants are expected to register for a Public Services Card (PSC) in order to access benefits. PSC users are expected to have their photographs taken in department offices, which is then digitally captured along with their signature. While this card was originally created to prevent benefits fraud – by insuring someone could not register twice to claim benefits – it is increasingly being used as a de facto form of ID and citizens have been apply for PSC even when they do…
Content type: Examples
Cases of people being denied healthcare as they fail to provide an Aadhaar number have already started emerging. A 28-year old domestic worker, for instance, had to be hospitalised for a blood transfusion after she had an abortion with an unqualified local physician. She had been denied an abortion, to which she was legally entitled, from a reputable government hospital, as she did not have an Aadhaar card. Following this case, 52 public health organisations and individuals issued a statement…
Content type: Examples
In India, one of the reasons the Aadhaar ID system has been increasingly widely used is that it is mandatory for much India’s benefits system. Government subsidies are now processed through under the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme, which requires citizens to have a bank account and to insure that their Aadhaar number is linked to their bank account so they can receive subsidies.
https://www.paisabazaar.com/aadhar-card/want-to-avail-government-subsidies-provide-aadhaar-and-get-it-easily/…
Content type: Examples
Research from the Brennan Center shows minorities are primarily affected by new laws that restrict citizens access to voting through ID requirement, increased distance to polling station, inconvenient opening hours and hidden costs.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/18/voter-id-poor-black-americans
Writer: Ed Pilkington
Publication: The Guardian
Content type: News & Analysis
Today, the Kenyan Government is starting their biometric registration exercise known as NIIMS, leading to the issuing of Huduma Namba ID numbers. Along with our colleagues and partners in the human rights community in Kenya, we are very worried about the ramifications of this system for people in Kenya, and particularly for marginalised communities.
Thanks to the hard work and timely action of civil society in Kenya, the judiciary has intervened at the last minute. A court ruling on…
Content type: News & Analysis
Creative Commons Photo Credit: Source
In this first episode of the Gender and Privacy Series, we go to Manila in the Philippines to meet two transgender right activists - Naomi Fontanos and AR Arcon. We discuss what the right to privacy means to them and their fight against the government's plan to deploy an ID card system.
Listen to the podcast here.
Content type: Explainer
This is the third part of Understanding Identity Systems. Read Part 1: Why ID?, and Part 2: Discrimination and Identity.
Biometrics
Biometrics are the physiological and behavioural characteristics of individuals. This could be fingerprints, voice, face, retina and iris patterns, hand geometry, gait or DNA profiles. However, the legal definition of ‘biometrics’ may differ – in some contexts, it may be defined by law, whereas in others it may not have, or only have…
Content type: Explainer
This is the second part of Understanding Identity Systems. Read Part 1: Why ID?, and Part 3: The Risks of ID.
The existing identity landscape
Every country has an existing landscape of ways in which people can identify themselves. This can include an existing ID card system, but also a range from birth registration, to passports, to driver licenses. The effectiveness of these systems may be unevenly distributed, or otherwise problematic.
The nature of the existing ID landscape…
Content type: Explainer
Introduction
Of all the data-intensive initiatives that a government can introduce, some of the largest are ID systems. They have implications across a broad range of human and civil rights. How do we begin to critique an ID system, to begin to understand its strengths and weaknesses? There are a series of issues that we believe should be addressed in the development of any ID system.
This could be of particular relevance to civil society organisations (CSOs): this is because civil…
Content type: Long Read
The Privacy International Network is celebrating Data Privacy Week, where we’ll be talking about how trends in surveillance and data exploitation are increasingly affecting our right to privacy. Join the conversation on Twitter using #dataprivacyweek.
Innovations in surveillance and data exploitation present challenges in the fight to protect personal data across the world. Since 1990 we have been working to build a global movement through working with others - from leading civil society…
Content type: Long Read
The Privacy International Network is celebrating Data Privacy Week, where we’ll be talking about how trends in surveillance and data exploitation are increasingly affecting our right to privacy. Join the conversation on Twitter using #dataprivacyweek.
It is often communities who are already the most marginalised who are at risk because of the privacy invasions of data-intensive systems. Across the globe, we see the dangers of identity systems; the harms of online violence against women and the…
Content type: Case Study
The exclusion caused by ID can have a devastating effect on people, limiting their opportunities and ability to survive.
Names have been changed.
Carolina is in a more privileged position than many other migrants, she admits that. She has a formal job, for one. She is – and has always been – in Chile legally: her previous visa has expired, and her new one is being processed. Under the law, she is permitted to stay and work in the country while this is happening. But she is finding the…
Content type: Case Study
Photo credit: Douglas Fernandes
The exclusion caused by ID can have a devastating effect on people, limiting their opportunities and ability to survive. In September 2018, Privacy International interviewed people in Santiago, Chile who had faced problems from the Chilean ID system, known as the RUT. Names have been changed.
It was never going to be easy for Liliana, entering Chile without a visa. But, in Chile, the ID system – known as the RUT – is ubiquitous; without one, as she would…
Content type: Long Read
Photo credit: Francisco Javier Argel
Questions of identification and ID, with their associated privacy risks, are only increasing. There are multiple dimensions to understanding the impact of ID and identification; a key one is to understand how it can exclude. This is why Privacy International is conducting research to explore this important and underreported aspect.
Read our case studies: Carolina and Iliana.
In the identity discourse, identity is often closely linked to themes of “…
Content type: News & Analysis
Photo Credit: Marion S. Trikosko
This month, the World Bank's Identity for Development (ID4D) initiative is launching its inaugural "Mission Billion Challenge", a competition designed to promote innovation in the identity space with the inaugural question: "How can digital identification systems in developing countries be designed to protect people’s privacy and provide them with greater control over their personal data?” But make no mistake: introducing "privacy by design" does…
Content type: Long Read
Photo Credit: Max Pixel
The fintech sector, with its data-intensive approach to financial services, faces a looming problem. Scandals such as Cambridge Analytica have brought public awareness about abuses involving the use of personal data from Facebook and other sources. Many of these are the same data sets that the fintech sector uses. With the growth of the fintech industry, and its increase in power and influence, it becomes essential to interrogate this use of data by the…
Content type: Long Read
Image attribution: By Legaleagle86 at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0.
In a long-anticipated judgment, the Indian Supreme Court has ruled that India's controversial identification system Aadhaar is Constitutional. They based their conclusion on notes that there are sufficient measures in place to protect data, and that it is difficult to undertake surveillance of citizens on the basis of Aadhaar.
But there is some good in this ruling. The court has demanded that the Government introduce…
Content type: Examples
In December 2017, it was revealed that the large telco Bharti Airtel made use of Aadhaar-linked eKYC (electronic Know Your Customer) to open bank accounts for their customers without their knowledge or consent. eKYC is a way of using data in the UIDAI database as part of the verification process, which Airtel made use of for the issuing of SIM cards, and also secretly opened bank accounts with their Airtel Payments Bank. More than 2 million accounts could have been opened, receiving more than…
Content type: Long Read
Who are you? The Challenges of Identity and Identification
“Identity” is a word that covers an incredible range of contested, deeply personal and highly politicised questions. These range from the political and the sociological, through to the psychological and philosophical. A question such as “who are you?” can elicit a multiplicity of responses, none of which are straightforward, are sometimes highly contextual, and are often deeply contested.
However, there is something of an attempt to…
Content type: Long Read
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the United Nations-led initiative to define the development agenda. Building on the eight Millennium Development Goals, the SDG’s 17 goals – and the 169 targets – serve as an opportunity to tackle many of the most pressing issues in the world today. The SDGs are also explicitly grounded in human rights. Goal 16 on “peace, justice, and sustainable institutions” aims to “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide…
Content type: Examples
In February 2018 the Home Office gave the Yorkshire Police 250 scanners that use a smartphone app to run mobile fingerprint checks against the UK's criminal fingerprint and biometrics database (IDENT1) and the Immigration and Asylum Biometrics System (IABS). The app was simultaneously made available to all 5,500 frontline Yorkshire Police officers, with a plan to roll the service out to another 20 forces by the end of 2018. Police are able to use the scanners when people they stop on the street…
Content type: Examples
In 2012, London Royal Free, Barnet, and Chase Farm hospitals agreed to provide Google's DeepMind subsidiary with access to an estimated 1.6 million NHS patient records, including full names and medical histories. The company claimed the information, which would remain encrypted so that employees could not identify individual patients, would be used to develop a system for flagging patients at risk of acute kidney injuries, a major reason why people need emergency care. Privacy campaigners…