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Content Type: Long Read
Image Source: "Voting Key" by CreditDebitPro is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Democratic society is under threat from a range of players exploiting our data in ways which are often hidden and unaccountable. These actors are manifold: traditional political parties (from the whole political spectrum), organisations or individuals pushing particular political agendas, foreign actors aiming at interfering with national democratic processes, and the industries that provide products that …
Content Type: Long Read
Imagine that every time you want to attend a march, religious event, political meeting, protest, or public rally, you must share deeply personal information with police and intelligence agencies, even when they have no reason to suspect you of wrongdoing.
First, you need to go to the police to register; have your photo taken for a biometric database; share the contacts of your family, friends, and colleagues; disclose your finances, health records, lifestyle choices, relationship status, and…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The first half of 2018 saw two major privacy moments: in March, the Facebook/ Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, followed in May by the EU General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") taking effect. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, as it has become known, grabbed the attention and outrage of the media, the public, parliamentarians and regulators around the world - demonstrating that yes, people do care about violations of their privacy and abuse of power. This scandal has been one of…
Content Type: News & Analysis
A mobile device is a huge repository of sensitive data, which could provide a wealth of information about its owner and many others with whom the user interacts.
Companies like Cellebrite, MSAB and Oxygen Forensics sell software and hardware to law enforcement. Once your phone is connected to one of these mobile phone extraction tools, the device extracts, analyses and presents the data contained on the phone.
What data these tools can extract and what method is used will…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This piece was first published in GDPR today in March 2019.
Elections, referendums and political campaigns around the world are becoming ever more sophisticated data operations. This raises questions about the political use and abuse of personal data. With the European Union elections fast approaching and numerous national and local elections taking place across EU Member States, it is essential that the legal frameworks intended to protect our personal data do just that.
Member State…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0
Between 23 and 26 May 2019 Europeans will be voting to elect members of the European Parliament.
Since the last elections in 2014, much has changed within and without the European Union: the rise of nationalism and Euroscepticism, the protracted armed conflict in Ukraine and the occupation of Crimea by Russia, the new political orientation of the United States, just to name a few.
Among the new challenges facing these elections is…
Content Type: Long Read
“Truth exists, but you have to find it”, Oleksandra Matviychuk of Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties told me as I interviewed her in central Kyiv one week before the 2019 Ukrainian run-off election, “and in order to do so you have to make some effort”. We’re talking about her experience working on the ground in Ukraine, a country with a long history of battling against disinformation.
Activists in Ukraine have long experience navigating the noisy and chaotic environment that disinformation…
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This image was found here.
Spain is holding a national general election on April 28 (its third in four years). Four weeks later Spaniards will again go to the polls to vote in the European Parliament elections. At Privacy International we are working to investigate and challenge the exploitation of people’s data in the electoral cycle including in political campaigns. This includes looking at the legal frameworks governing the use of data by political parties and their…
Content Type: Long Read
Last week, an investigation by Bloomberg revealed that thousands of Amazon employees around the world are listening in on Amazon Echo users.
As we have been explaining across media, we believe that by using default settings and vague privacy policies which allow Amazon employees to listen in on the recordings of users’ interactions with their devices, Amazon risks deliberately deceiving its customers.
Amazon has so far been dismissive, arguing that people had the options to opt out from the…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Image: Anatomy of an AI system: a map of the many processes — extracting material resources, data, and human labor — that make an Amazon Echo work. Credit: Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler
With over 6.3 million Amazon Echo devices worldwide, there is a good chance these constantly active devices will record criminal behavior.
Bloomberg, who recently reported on yet another creepy feature, that Amazon workers are listening to what you tell Alexa, were told by workers…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Protest movements throughout history have helped to shape the world we know today. From the suffragettes to the civil rights movement, and to contemporary movements such as those focusing on LGBTIQ+ rights, protests have become a vital way for many, who feel powerless otherwise, to have their voices heard.
But now, making the decision to attend a protest comes with consequences that you may very well be unaware of. This is because policing and security services, always hungry in their quest to…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Mr. Zuckerberg has discovered the usefulness of regulation to protect our personal data. After years of lobbying against the adoption of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and of lamenting the ills of its implementation, Facebook seems ready to embrace European data protection law and even spread it across the world. Similar sentiments were recently expressed by Twitter.
This is a welcome change. Maybe the fines recently imposed by regulators and the increased scrutiny of…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Earlier this month, Brunei attracted international condemnation for a new law that will make gay sex punishable by death. While this is clearly abhorrent, Brunei is not the only country with explicit anti-gay laws.
Homosexuality is criminalised in over 70 countries around the world. And even in countries where gay sex is legal, such as the US, the LGBTIQ+ community still faces discriminatory surveillance and profiling by law enforcement agencies.
Through using the Internet and mobile apps,…
Content Type: News & Analysis
According to the International Organization for Migration, an estimated 258 million people are international migrants – that is, someone who changes their country of usual residence, That’s one in every 30 people on earth.
These unprecedented movements levels show no sign of slowing down. It is predicted that by 2050, there will be 450 million migrants across the world.
Nowadays, it is politically acceptable to demonise migrants, and countless leaders have spewed divisive and xenophobic…
Content Type: Long Read
(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).
Content Type: Long Read
The UK border authority is using money ring-fenced for aid to train, finance, and provide equipment to foreign border control agencies in a bid to “export the border” to countries around the world.
Under the UK Border Force’s “Project Hunter”, the agency works with foreign security authorities to bolster their “border intelligence and targeting” capabilities with UK know-how and equipment.
As well as the provision of equipment and training, the Border Force is also advising countries on…
Content Type: News & Analysis
PI has today written to Google, Instagram, Snapchat, TicTok, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp to ask for more information about their steps to tell people why they are seeing ads. Facebook recently announced expanding the company's ad transparency measures to include more information about why an ad or content appears in a user's newsfeed. While Facebook has a lot more to do, it is important that all technology companies provide advertising transparency.
Recently, we have seen how platforms…
Content Type: Long Read
Cellebrite, a surveillance firm marketing itself as the “global leader in digital intelligence”, is marketing its digital extraction devices at a new target: authorities interrogating people seeking asylum.
Israel-based Cellebrite, a subsidiary of Japan’s Sun Corporation, markets forensic tools which empower authorities to bypass passwords on digital devices, allowing them to download, analyse, and visualise data.
Its products are in wide use across the world: a 2019 marketing…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is trying to force the Chinese owner of the gay dating app Grindr to sell the app because of national security concerns. This is the first time the committee has considered the national security implications of a foreign social media app.
Early last year, the Chinese company Beijing Kunlun Tech purchased the Californian-based dating app. Kulun had already owned 60 per cent of Grindr since 2016. Yet, it is only now – with an…
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
This past weekend, in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg called for new regulations to address harmful content, electoral integrity, privacy and data portability.
Nine years since he proclaimed that privacy is no longer a social norm, four years since Facebook noticed broadscale harvesting and exploitation of their users' data by third party companies and chose not to tell us about it, two years since he denied there were any abuses of data in political campaigns, and…
Content Type: Long Read
(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).
Content Type: News & Analysis
Planning and participating in peaceful protests against governments or non-state actors’ policies and practices requires the capacity of individuals to communicate confidentially without unlawful interference. From protests in support of LGBTI rights to protests against specific projects that undermine local communities’ wellbeing, these movements would not have been possible without the ability to exchange ideas and develop plans in private spaces.
Unlawful interference with…
Content Type: Long Read
(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).
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: Long Read
(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).
Content Type: News & Analysis
At Privacy International, we talk about: “the world being on fire.”We say it to talk about the recurring threats to our democracies, the elections of authoritarian leaders, the current political climate… Or the actual climate. More often than not, we use it to talk about the (lack of) security in the design and implementation of computer systems.
But there is another kind of fire. The fourth wave of feminism – the one that contributed to the protests following the 2012 gang rape of…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Image source: Oxfam
This piece was co-authored with Ruhiya Seward, Senior Program Officer at IDRC and originally appeared here.
What if in trying to make development more equitable we’re creating risks that disproportionately impact people based on their gender?
Development programming aims to be both sustainable and equitable in part by recognizing the implications of inequality in its many forms, whether by gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or geolocation. The adoption of the…
Content Type: Long Read
For International Women’s Day 2019, Privacy International looks at some of the key themes around the intersection of gender rights and the right to privacy and we review the work we and our partners have done on those topics.
When dealing with cases of non-consensual sharing of intimate images, often known as ‘revenge porn,’ or doxxing, where a person’s personal details are shared publicly, the link between privacy and online-gender-based violence is very clear. Privacy…
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.