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Content Type: News & Analysis
The notorious Clearview AI first rose to prominence in January 2020, following a New York Times report. Put simply, Clearview AI is a facial recognition company that uses an “automated image scraper”, a tool that searches the web and collects any images that it detects as containing human faces. All these faces are then run through its proprietary facial recognition software, to build a gigantic biometrics database.
What this means is that without your knowledge, your face could be stored…
Content Type: News & Analysis
What if we told you that every photo of you, your family, and your friends posted on your social media or even your blog could be copied and saved indefinitely in a database with billions of images of other people, by a company you've never heard of? And what if we told you that this mass surveillance database was pitched to law enforcement and private companies across the world?
This is more or less the business model and aspiration of Clearview AI, a company that only received worldwide…
Content Type: Advocacy
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has developed draft privacy guidance for police agencies' use of FRT, with a view to ensuring any use of FRT "complies with the law, minimizes privacy risks, and respects privacy rights". The Commissioner is undergoing consultation in relation to this guidance.
Privacy International and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association ("CCLA") welcome the Commissioner's efforts to strengthen the framework around police use of facial recognition, and the…
Content Type: Video
On 6 February 2021, the Constitutional Court of South Africa in a historic judgment declared unconstitutional years of secret and unchecked surveillance by South African authorities against millions of people - irrespective of whether they reside in South Africa.
The Court powerfully placed the judgment in historical context:
The constitutionally protected right to privacy seeks to be one of the guarantees that South Africa will not again act like the police state that it was under apartheid…
Content Type: Long Read
What’s the ruling all about?
The Constitutional Court of South Africa in a historic judgment declared that bulk interception by the South African National Communications Centre is unlawful and invalid. Furthermore, the Constitutional Court found that the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act (RICA) 1) was deficient in failing to provide at least a post-notification procedure for subjects of interception; 2) failed to ensure the…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Today, the Constitutional Court of South Africa in a historic judgment declared that bulk interception by the South African National Communications Centre is unlawful and invalid.
The judgment is a confirmation of the High Court of South Africa in Pretoria’s powerful rejection of years of secret and unchecked surveillance by South African authorities against millions of people - irrespective of whether they reside in South Africa.
The case was brought by two applicants, the amaBhungane Centre…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Today, the High Court of South Africa in Pretoria in a historic decision declared that bulk interception by the South African National Communications Centre is unlawful and invalid.
The judgment is a powerful rejection of years of secret and unchecked surveillance by South African authorities against millions of people - irrespective of whether they reside in South Africa.
The case was brought by two applicants, the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism and journalist Stephen…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Our intervention comes on the back of mounting evidence that the South African state’s surveillance powers have been abused, and so-called “checks & balances” in RICA have failed to protect citizens’ constitutional right to privacy.
Among our core arguments are:
That people have a right to be notified when their communications have been intercepted so that they can take action when they believe their privacy has been unlawfully breached. Currently RICA prevents such notification, unlike…
Content Type: Long Read
This piece was written by Ashley Gorski, who is an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, and PI legal officer Scarlet Kim and originally appeared in The Guardian here.
In recent weeks, the Hollywood film about Edward Snowden and the movement to pardon the NSA whistleblower have renewed worldwide attention on the scope and substance of government surveillance programs. In the United States, however, the debate has often been a narrow one, focused on the…
Content Type: Long Read
This week, Privacy International, together with nine other international human rights NGOs, filed submissions with the European Court of Human Rights. Our case challenges the UK government’s bulk interception of internet traffic transiting fiber optic cables landing in the UK and its access to information similarly intercepted in bulk by the US government, which were revealed by the Snowden disclosures. To accompany our filing, we have produced two infographics to illustrate the…
Content Type: Long Read
Few revelations have been been as troubling for the right to privacy as uncovering the scope of the Five Eyes alliance. The intelligence club made up of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States has integrated its collection efforts, staff, bases, and analysis programs. Yet the legal rulebook governing how the agencies ensure the most comprehensive joint surveillance effort in the history of mankind remains secret.
The little that is known suggests a…
Content Type: Long Read
Many people imagine intelligence sharing to be a practice whereby men in trench coats silently slide manilla envelopes containing anonymous tip-offs or intelligence reports marked TOP SECRET across tables in smoke-filled rooms.
While such practices certainly exist, they represent only a tiny slice of intelligence sharing activities, and are vastly overshadowed by the massive exchange of bulk unanlysed (raw) intelligence data that takes place between the UK and its Five Eyes allies.…
Content Type: Long Read
Bad analogies about surveillance technology pervade newspaper reports, politicians’ speeches, and legal arguments. While it’s natural to want simple explanations to understand complex technology, it does us a disservice when governments, the media, or the courts mislead us through analogies that are inadequate. It is even worse if these analogies are used as a basis for policy change.
Privacy International’s legal challenge against GCHQ’s mass surveillance rests…
Content Type: Long Read
The recent revelations, made possible by NSA-whistleblower Edward Snowden, of the reach and scope of global surveillance practices have prompted a fundamental re- examination of the role of intelligence services in conducting coordinated cross-border surveillance.
The Five Eyes alliance of States – comprised of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Canada’s Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the…
Content Type: Report
The recent revelations, made possible by NSA-whistleblower Edward Snowden, of the reach and scope of global surveillance practices have prompted a fundamental re-examination of the role of intelligence services in conducting coordinated cross-border surveillance.
The Five Eyes alliance of States – comprised of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Canada’s Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the…
Content Type: News & Analysis
With the launch of the "Eyes Wide Open" project, Privacy International has put together a fact sheet about the secretive Five Eyes alliance. Consider this a guide to the secret surveillance alliance that has infiltrated every aspect of the modern global communications system.
Beginning in 1946, an alliance of five English-speaking countries (the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) developed a series of bilateral agreements over more than a decade that became known as the UKUSA…
Content Type: Long Read
Britain's spy agency, GCHQ, is secretly conducting mass surveillance by tapping fibre optic cables, giving it access to huge amounts of data on both innocent citizens and targeted suspects, according to a report in the Guardian.
Mass, indiscriminate surveillance of this kind goes against an individual's fundamental human right to privacy. The scope and scale of this program, which monitors the entire British public and much of the world, is neither necessary nor proportionate and thus,…