Advanced Search
Content Type: Long Read
Privacy and security are both essential to protecting individuals, including their autonomy and dignity. Undermining privacy undermines the security of individuals, their devices and the broader infrastructure. People need privacy to freely secure themselves, their information, and fully enjoy other rights. However, a growing number of governments around the world are embracing hacking to facilitate their surveillance activities.
As a form of government surveillance, hacking presents…
Content Type: Long Read
Background
Kenya’s National Integrated Identity Management Scheme (NIIMS) is a biometric database of the Kenyan population, that will eventually be used to give every person in the country a unique “Huduma Namba” for accessing services. This system has the aim of being the “single point of truth”, a biometric population register of every citizen and resident in the country, that then links to multiple databases across government and, potentially, the private sector.
NIIMS was introduced…
Content Type: News & Analysis
On 30 January 2020, Kenya’s High Court handed down its judgment on the validity of the implementation of the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS), known as the Huduma Namba. Privacy International submitted an expert witness testimony in the case. We await the final text of the judgment, but the summaries presented by the judges in Court outline the key findings of the Court. Whilst there is much there that is disappointing, the Court found that the implementation of NIIMS…
Content Type: Advocacy
This stakeholder report is a submission by Privacy International (PI), the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders Kenya (NCHRD-K), The Kenya Legal & Ethical Issues Network on HIV and AIDS (KELIN), and Paradigm Initiative.
PI, NCHRD-K, KELIN, and Paradigm Initiative wish to bring their concerns about the protection and promotion of the right to privacy, and other rights and freedoms that privacy supports, for consideration in Kenya’s upcoming review at the 35th session of the Working…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Federal law enforcement is deploying powerful computer hacking tools to conduct domestic criminal and immigration investigations.
By Alex Betschen, Student Attorney, Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic, University at Buffalo School of Law
Hacking by the government raises grave privacy concerns, creating surveillance possibilities that were previously the stuff of science fiction. It also poses a security risk, because hacking takes advantage of unpatched vulnerabilities in our…
Content Type: Press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 21, 2018
CONTACTS:
Alex Betschen, Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic, [email protected], 716–531–6649
Colton Kells, Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic, [email protected], 585–766–5119
Abdullah Hasan, ACLU, [email protected], 646–905–8879
NEW YORK — Privacy International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic of the University at Buffalo School of Law filed a lawsuit today…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This piece was originally published on Just Security.
Ten years ago, an FBI official impersonated an Associated Press reporter to lure and track a teenager suspected of sending in prank bomb threats to his school. To find him, the FBI agent, posing as a reporter, sent the teenager links to a supposed story he was working on, but the links were infested with malware that once clicked on quickly exposed the teen’s location. More recently, the FBI has seized and modified websites so…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Around the world, from North America to Europe and Asia, governments are starting to roll out smart meters. While the technology promises increased energy efficiency through greater consumer control over energy consumption, smart meters also raise serious privacy concerns. Smart meters collect energy usage data at high frequencies - typically every five, fifteen or 30 minutes. That level of granularity reveals how much electricity is being used in a home and when, which in turn can paint an…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Recently, a text from a local telecommunications company inquired whether its subscribers knew that they could now enroll their voice so they could access various services securely and conveniently. This added a further dynamic to the on-going debate in several quarters on the accelerated adoption of biometrics in Kenya. Does Kenya have the necessary framework in place to safeguard the privacy and security of its citizens? The reality is, innovators will not wait for an optimal…
Content Type: Long Read
This piece was orignally published in Slate in February 2017
In 2015, the FBI obtained a warrant to hack the devices of every visitor to a child pornography website. On the basis of this single warrant, the FBI ultimately hacked more than 8,700 computers, resulting in a wave of federal prosecutions. The vast majority of these devices—over 83 percent—were located outside the United States, in more than 100 different countries. Now, we are in the midst of the first cases…
Content Type: Long Read
This piece originally appeared here.
On both sides of the Atlantic, we are witnessing the dramatic expansion of government hacking powers. In the United States, a proposed amendment to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure would permit the government to obtain a warrant, in certain circumstances, to hack unspecified numbers of electronic devices anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, across the pond, the British Parliament is currently debating the Investigatory…