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Content Type: Advocacy
Privacy International notes New Zealand’s written replies to the list of issues prior to reporting in relation to the New Zealand’s laws, policies and practices related to interception of personal communications.
A review of the security and intelligence legislation is currently underway in accordance with the Intelligence and Security Committee Act. It is expected that the Parliament will consider the review in 2016. Hence this represents a significant opportunity to amend the current…
Content Type: Report
Privacy International's new investigation (available in English and in Arabic), 'THE PRESIDENT'S MEN? Inside the Technical Research Department', sheds light on the Technical Research Department, a secret unit of the Egyptian intelligence infrastructure that has purchased surveillance equipment from German/Finnish manufacturer of monitoring centres for telecommunication surveillance, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Italian malware manufacturer, Hacking Team.
Content Type: News & Analysis
The major overhaul of data protection laws in Europe is finally over, after three years of arduous and sustained political and lobbying activity by all those with a major stake and interest, including us at Privacy International (See our initial analysis of the two laws in 2012). We welcome this long overdue closure, but is this 91-articled, 200-paged piece of legislation been worth the enormous effort and no doubt millions of euros, dollars and pounds spent on it?
The legislative package…
Content Type: Report
Privacy International's new report, For God and My President: State Surveillance in Uganda, exposes the secret surveillance operation and the government's attempts to buy further powerful surveillance tools, including a national communications monitoring centre and intrusion malware, in the absence of a rigorous legal framework governing communications surveillance
Content Type: Press release
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni directed intelligence and police officials to use a powerful, invasive malware to spy on domestic political opponents – including parliamentarians, activists and media houses – following the 2011 presidential election, during a period of urban unrest and police violence, according to secret government documents obtained by Privacy International. A feature broadcast piece will air on BBC Newsnight on Thursday, 15 October.
Privacy International's new…
Content Type: Long Read
We hate to say we told you so.
Privacy International has for years warned that powerful surveillance technologies are used to facilitate serious human rights abuses with insufficient technological and legal safeguards against abuse.
We now have the most solid evidence to date that we were right. Our latest investigation uncovers disturbing evidence that substantiates our long held concerns.
Today Privacy International publishes an investigation (PDF) into communications surveillance in…
Content Type: Press release
Human Rights Watch and three individuals have today lodged a legal challenge to establish whether their communications were part of those unlawfully shared between the US National Security Agency (NSA) and UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Despite billions of records being shared every day between the NSA and GCHQ, and that historical sharing having been declared unlawful [PDF], the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has not yet confirmed to any claimant that their…
Content Type: Report
Over a dozen international companies are supplying powerful communications surveillance technology in Colombia. Privacy International examines the actors across the world involved in facilitating state surveillance.The report is available in English and Spanish.
Content Type: Report
For nearly two decades, the Colombian government has been expanding its capacity to spy on the private communications of its citizens. Privacy International's investigation reveals the state of Colombia's overlapping, unchecked systems of surveillance, including mass surveillance, that are vulnerable to abuse.
See the report in English and Spanish.
Content Type: Press release
The release of a new report by Privacy International exposes Colombia's intelligence agencies' previously unknown history of developing communications surveillance capabilities outside of lawful authority.
The report “Shadow State: Surveillance law and order in Colombia” reveals, via previously unreleased documents, the Colombian police agencies' and intelligence services' long history developing surveillance systems. Rather than building a well-regulated system of surveillance after Colombia…
Content Type: Advocacy
The Pakistani government has significantly expanded its communication interception activities. This Privacy International report covers the intelligence services plan to capture all IP-traffic in Pakistan and other initiatives, pointing to gaps in the laws governing surveillance.
Content Type: Press release
A new report released today by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) highlights key technical blind spots in current GCHQ oversight and calls for a new, comprehensive and clear legal framework governing British intelligence agencies' surveillance capability.
The report panel, which included three former British intelligence chiefs, sets out clear deficiencies in the existing technical oversight regime, explaining current oversight "does not check the code [that underlies GCHQ’s…
Content Type: Press release
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) today revealed that the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spied on two international human rights organisations, failed to follow ITS own secret procedures and acted unlawfully.
The targeted NGOs are the South African Legal Resources Centre (LRC) and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). Both are leading civil liberties organisations and co-claimants alongside Privacy International, Liberty,…
Content Type: Advocacy
Following today's Justice Ministers Council meeting in Luxembourg where an agreement was reached on the proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Privacy International and European Digital Rights (EDRi) issued the following statement:
In January 2012, the European Commission, following extensive consultations, published a draft Regulation. The initiative had three priorities - modernisation of the legal framework for the protection of personal data,…
Content Type: Press release
Governments must accept they have lost the debate over the legitimacy of mass surveillance and reform their oversight of intelligence gathering, Privacy International and Amnesty International said today in a briefing published two years after Edward Snowden blew the lid on US and UK intelligence agencies’ international spying network.
“The balance of power is beginning to shift,” said Edward Snowden in an article published today in newspapers around the world. “With each court victory,…
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: 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: 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
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
The following appeared in the Daily Telegraph, and was written by Carly Nyst, Legal Director of Privacy International:
"Robert Hannigan, the new head of GCHQ, announced his arrival this week with a call for “greater co-operation” with security forces by tech companies. Hannigan’s article in the Financial Times illustrated vividly the destructive ideology that has driven the infiltration by the British and American intelligence agencies into every aspects of the digital realm – an…
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
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: Press release
Privacy International today filed a legal complaint demanding an end to the unlawful hacking being carried out by GCHQ which, in partnership with the NSA, is infecting potentially millions of computer and mobile devices around the world with malicious software that gives them the ability to sweep up reams of content, switch on users' microphones or cameras, listen to their phone calls and track their locations.
The complaint, filed in the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, is the…
Content Type: News & Analysis
After two years of pressing the Government to come clean on what, if anything, they are doing to investigate the potentially illegal export of the spyware FinFisher, a ruling today by the Administrative Court in Privacy International’s favour marks a significant turning point in our long-running campaign to bring more transparency and accountability to the surveillance industry.
The High Court slammed Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for not disclosing whether it was investigating…
Content Type: Press release
High Court slams HMRC for unlawful concealing of information surrounding export of spyware FinFisher
In a damning judgment today the Administrative Court declared that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) acted unlawfully and “irrationally” in issuing blanket refusals into the status of any investigation into the potentially illegal export of the spyware FinFisher to repressive regimes by UK-based Gamma International.
The case arises from Privacy International’s long-running campaign to bring transparency and accountability to the secretive surveillance technology industry. As…