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Content Type: Long Read
National and International civil society organisations (CSOs) play vital roles in many aspects of our societies as watchdogs of state powers, as representatives of the voices of the people, as experts to inform and educate an array of stakeholders.
One of our key lessons learned from three decades of work, including 10 years with the Privacy International Networkto build a global privacy movement,promoting and advocating for the highest privacy and data protection safeguards has been…
Content Type: Report
Esta parte de "Las Claves para Mejorar la Protección de Datos" proporciona enlaces a recursos adicionales y describe las vías de participación para mejorar el involucramiento de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil en estos temas.
Content Type: Report
This part of “The Keys to Data Protection” outlines the models and structures as well as powers and functions of an independent supervisory authority, which plays an essential role as an independent oversight and enforcement mechanism of data protection law.
Content Type: Report
Esta parte de "Las Claves para Mejorar la Protección de Datos" presenta las responsabilidades, obligaciones y responsabilidades de quienes procesan datos personales, para garantizar que sean responsables ante la ley.
Content Type: Report
This part of “The Keys to Data Protection” outlines and explains the legal basis permitted for the processing of personal data, which should be limited and clearly articulated in law.
Content Type: Report
Esta parte de "Las Claves para Mejorar la Protección de Datos" presenta los derechos clave para los titulares de protección de datos personales, que deben ser respetados y aplicados por quienes procesan efectúan tratamiento de datos.
Content Type: Report
Esta parte de "Las Claves para Mejorar la Protección de Datos" presenta disposiciones generales para una ley de protección de datos, que incluyen el objeto y el propósito de la ley y las definiciones básicas que debe contener.
Content Type: Report
This part of “The Keys to Data Protection” presents and explains seven key data protection principles, derived from regional and international frameworks, covering elements such as minimisation, storage limitation, and accountability.
Content Type: Report
This part of “The Keys to Data Protection” explains what data protection is, why it is needed, and how to works. It also outlines why it is essential for the exercise of the right to privacy. This part also provides a brief outline of data protection in practice.
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…
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Privacy International’s new report shows how countries with powerful security agencies are training, equipping, and directly financing foreign surveillance agencies. Driven by advances in technology, increased surveillance is both powered by and empowering rising authoritarianism globally, as well as attacks on democracy, peoples’ rights, and the rule of law.To ensure that surveillance powers used by governments are used to protect rather than endanger people, it is essential that the public,…
Content Type: Long Read
The idea of a “smart city” is primarily a marketing concept, used to sell data-intensive technologies under the pretext of improving the functioning of cities. This could include injecting ‘smart’ tech into delivering services, public safety, environmental monitoring, traffic control, among other possible applications.
One in particular aspect of smart cities has been consistently problematic: how these projects are used to boost law enforcement and policing under the guise of public safety.…
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Creative Commons Photo Credit: Source
UPDATE: 30 July 2019
Privacy International has identified the following:
Two RAB officers received approval to travel to the USA in April 2019 for training on “Location Based Social Network Monitoring System Software for RAB Intelligence Wing”
Three RAB officers received approval to travel to Russia in August 2017 to participate in user training of “Backpack IMSI Catcher (2G, 3G, 4G)” paid for by Annex SW Engineering, a…
Content Type: Long Read
Creative Commons Photo Credit: Source
In the midst of continued widespread public outrage at the US government’s brutal ‘zero-tolerance’ policy around immigration – multiple data and analytics companies have quietly avoided answering questions about their role in feeding the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s data backbone. These companies are bidding to work with an agency that has time and time again shown itself to be a brutal and problematic.
Privacy International…
Content Type: Report
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently issued a series of decisions in Privacy International’s long-running battle for information about UK police forces' acquisition of IMSI catchers. This case study provides an in-depth summary and analysis of this process.
We hope it is useful to both campaigners seeking greater transparency from policing bodies, and more widely to Freedom of Information campaigners who are trying to challenge 'neither confirm nor deny' responses to FOI…
Content Type: Report
Privacy International welcomes the opportunity to file these comments in advance of the Federal Trade Commission’s public hearings on competition and consumer protection in the 21st century.
Content Type: Report
Countries with powerful security agencies are spending literally billions to equip, finance and train security and surveillance agencies around the world — including authoritarian regimes. This is resulting in entrenched authoritarianism, further facilitation of abuse against people, and diversion of resources from long-term development programmes.
Privacy International's report 'Teach 'em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance' examines this problem closely, providng examples from US, China…
Content Type: Long Read
Privacy International (PI) has today released a new report, 'Teach 'em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance', showing how countries with powerful security agencies are training, equipping, and directly financing foreign surveillance agencies.
Spurred by advances in technology, increased surveillance is both powered by and empowering rising authoritarianism globally, as well as attacks on democracy, rights, and the rule of law.
As well as providing a background to the issue, the report…
Content Type: Long Read
How would you feel if you were fingerprinted by the police before you were allowed to take part in a peaceful public demonstration?
As tens of thousands of people attend massive public demonstrations across the UK today against US President Donald Trump in a ‘Carnival of Resistance’, it’s a question worth asking. Why? Because the police now deploy a range of highly sophisticated surveillance tools at public events which are just as if not more intrusive. And these technologies should be even…
Content Type: Long Read
This piece was written by PI voluteer Natalie Chyi.
Transparency is necessary to ensure that those in power – including governments and companies – are not able to operate in the dark, away from publicscrutiny. That’s why calls for more transparency are routine by everyone from civil society and journalists to politicians.
The bigger picture is often lost when transparency is posed as the only solution to shadowy state and corporate powers. For one, the term is so broadly understood that it…
Content Type: Long Read
Privacy and data protection are currently being debated more intensively than ever before. In this interview, Frederike Kaltheuner from the civil rights organisation Privacy International explains why those terms have become so fundamentally important to us. The article was first published in the newly launched magazine ROM. The interview was conducted by ROM publisher Khesrau Behroz and writers Patrick Stegemann and Milosz Paul Rosinski.
Frederike Kaltheuner, you work for Privacy…
Content Type: Long Read
Yesterday the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) - which is responsible for ensuring people's personal data is protected - announced it intends to fine Facebook the maximum amount possible for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
This decision highlights of how serious and rampant misuse and exploitation of data is. Facebook is responsible and failed to comply with data protection 101: be upfront and honest about what you are doing with people's data.
Importantly, the ICO's…
Content Type: Long Read
Update 28 June 2018
Last week Privacy International wrote to Thomson Reuters Corporation asking the company to commit to ensuring the vast amounts of data they provide to US immigration agencies isn’t used to identify families for indefinite detention or separation, or for other human rights abuses.
Thomson Reuters has unfortunately ignored our specific questions and made no such commitment.
Instead, the CEO Thomson Reuters Special Services (TRSS) a subsidiary, makes clear that instead of…
Content Type: Long Read
The European Union's new data privacy law (General Data Protection Regulation, better known as GDPR) takes effect today May 25th, 2018, after a two-year transition period. Despite some companies appearing to believe otherwise, and many articles misrepresenting its contents, the GDPR will have a significative impact beyond the European Union, and it will extend many of its data privacy safeguards to users’ data globally.
There are a number of reasons that explain this impact:
Obligations…
Content Type: Long Read
We found the image here.
Open a Russian Matryoshka doll and you will find a smaller doll inside. Ask a large data company such as Acxiom and Oracle where they get their data from, and the answer will be from smaller data companies.
Data companies – a catch all term for data brokers, advertisers, marketers, web trackers, and more – facilitate a hidden data ecosystem that collects, generates and supplies data to wide variety of beneficiaries. The beneficiaries of the ecosystem can include other…
Content Type: Long Read
Privacy and data protection are fundamental rights. When respected they help improve trust and reduce power imbalances. Individuals should have rights over their personal data, regardless of who holds or processes it, and effective ways to enforce those rights, through independent bodies.
While not an ideal solution, GDPR gives individuals more control over their personal data. Rather than burdening individuals with managing and protecting their data, the onus will be on the companies to do so…
Content Type: Long Read
If you operate an internet company in Russia, you aren’t necessarily surprised to one day open the door to someone, grasping in one hand a bundle of wires and in the other a letter from a government agency demanding access to your servers, with a black box wedged under one arm.
Internet companies in Russia are required by law to store the content of users’ communications for six months and the metadata of users’ communications for three years, essentially meaning that what a person does…
Content Type: Long Read
Hasn't Facebook said it would give European data protection to all of their users?
Yes, but only in very vague language. In an initial reaction to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mark Zuckerberg declared that Facebook would apply the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) “in spirit” to their 2 billion users worldwide. When questioned by members of the US Congress, Zuckerberg declared that "[a]ll the same controls will be available around the world". Representative Green sought…