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Content Type: Examples
In 2019, interviews with Hong Kong protesters destroying smart lampposts revealed that many distrusted the government's claim that they would only take air quality measurements and help with traffic control, largely because of the comprehensive surveillance net the Chinese government was using to control and oppress the minority Uighur population in the Xinjiang region. As part of their response to this threat, the protesters wore masks, carried umbrellas, and travelled on foot, using online…
Content Type: Examples
In 2019 Hong Kong protesters cut down 20 of the city's smart lampposts, which are streetlights equipped with sensors and cameras, in order to counter the threat that they were vectors for surveillance technologies such as facial and licence plate recognition. TickTack Technology, which provided the lampposts, terminated its contract with the Hong Kong government because of the property damage and threats to its employees. Protesters uploaded pictures of the lampposts' inner workings to Facebook…
Content Type: Examples
During 2019, Hong Kong law enforcement authorities had access to AI facial recognition software provided by Sydney-based iOmniscient that can match faces and licence plates from video footage to police databases, but chief executive Carrie Lam's administration and police did not confirm whether they were using it to quash the pro-democracy protests. IOmniscient is also used to find lost children and manage traffic and has users in more than 50 countries. Under Hong Kong's privacy laws, members…
Content Type: Examples
As police began treating every 2019 Hong Kong protest as an illegal assembly attracting sentences of up to ten years in jail, facial recognition offered increased risk of being on the streets, as protesters could be identified and arrested later even if they were in too large a crowd to be picked up at the time. By October, more than 2,000 people had been arrested, and countless others had been targeted with violence, doxxing, and online harassment. On the street, protesters began using…
Content Type: Examples
Both protesters and police during the 2019 Hong Kong protests used technical tools including facial recognition to counter each other's tactics. Police tracked protest leaders online and sought to gain access to their phones on a set of Telegram channels. When police stopped wearing identification badges, protesters began to expose their identities online on another. The removal of identification badges has led many to suspect that surveillance techniques are being brought in from mainland…
Content Type: Examples
UK police have used unmanned drones to monitor political protests for animal rights, by Extinction Rebellion, and against HS2, an extreme-right demonstration, and those held peacefully by Black Lives Matter, according to the campaign group Drone Watch. The Surrey, Cleveland, Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, and West Midlands forces all admitted to using drones at BLM events. Others admitting to using drones include Devon and Cornwall and Avon and Somerset.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/…
Content Type: Examples
A British freedom of information tribunal ruled that for national security reasons police in England and Wales may refuse to say whether they are using Stingrays, also known as IMSI-catchers, which are capable of tracking thousands of mobile phones and intercepting their calls, text messages, and other data. In 2016, the Bristol Cable found that police forces had bought hundreds of thousands of these devices disguised in public spending data by the acronym CCDC. Privacy International, which…
Content Type: Explainer
Where are my images, contacts and documents stored?
You generate data every time you use your phone e.g. you generate data when you take photographs or record videos, when you create or edit notes and documents on the go, and when you add new names and numbers to your contacts directory.
All this data is created through dedicated apps - your camera and photo apps, social media apps, notes apps, and your contacts app are just some examples.
It is important to note that when you create any…
Content Type: Examples
On November 9, 2020, after a year of escalating tensions, Peruvian president Martín Vizcarra was impeached on the grounds of "moral incapacity" by lawmakers threatened by his anti-corruption investigations and the policy reform he led. The street protests that followed all over the country were coordinated via Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, and TikTok (#MerinoNoMeRepresenta) by hundreds of newly-created small, decentralised organisations. The march on November 14 is thought to be the largest in…
Content Type: Examples
US Customs and Border Protection Data show that the Department of Homeland Security deployed helicopters, airplanes, and drones over 15 cities, including New York City, Buffalo, Dayton OH, and Philadelphia, where demonstrators assembled to protest the killing of George Floyd and collected at least 270 hours of video surveillance footage. That deployment, which sparked a congressional inquiry, was only part of a nationwide operation that repurposed resources usually sent to the US border to find…
Content Type: Examples
According to records obtained under a freedom of information request, the San Francisco Police Department used the camera network belonging to downtown Union Square Improvement District to spy on protesters during the end of May and early June 2020. The high-definition cameras, manufactured by Motorola brand Avigilon, can zoom in on a person's face and are linked to a software analysis system. Motorola is expanding its tool lineup to make it easier for police to gain access to private cameras…
Content Type: People
TRUSTEE/Treasurer Amanda is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), and has held financial leadership roles in the public, private and charity sectors. Amanda is currently the Finance Executive Director of Health Data Research UK, the UK’s national institute for health data science.
Content Type: Examples
Russian authorities are using facial recognition to track opposition protesters to their homes and arrest them, though the cameras are often turned off or "malfunctioning" when state security agents are suspected of attacks on or murders of journalists and opposition activists. The data is gathered into a central database and is sold cheaply by corrupt officials on Russia's "probiv" black market in data. Facial recognition software, produced by local companies such as NtechLab, is…
Content Type: Examples
Protesters in Tunisia have faced hate messages, threats, and other types of harassment on social media, and been arrested when they complain to police. Arrests and prosecutions based on Facebook posts are becoming more frequent, and in street protests law enforcement appears to target LGBTQ community members for mistreament. In a report, Human Rights Watch collected testimonies to document dozens of cases in which LGBTQ people were harassed online, doxxed, and forcibly outed; some have been…
Content Type: Examples
Following the coup in Myanmar, the junta deployed Chinese CH-3A and Cailhong drones to monitor protesters and aid the military, according to a report that based its findings on images posted to social media showing low-flying drones over protests in Mandalay. CH-3A drones collect aerial surveillance images and data, and are used in counter-insurgency operations. The Caihong drones can be configured for many different types of missions: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance,…
Content Type: Examples
A surveillance plane flown by the Florida Highway Patrol circled repeatedly over a news conference in which two civil rights lawyers announced a lawsuit against local police and demanded a federal investigation into the killing of two unarmed black teenagers. Publicly available flight data confirmed the flight path. Surveillance flights over protests against police brutality have been dployed by law enforcement agencies in Washington, DC, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon.
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Content Type: Examples
In response to an FOI request, US Customs and Border Patrol released the video collected by a Predator drone it flew for 90 minutes at a height of 6,000 feet over the Minneapolis protests following the murder of George Floyd. CBP has been repeatedly found engaging in this type of surveillance; past such efforts have included the homes of indigenous pipeline activists. The video mostly shows clouds over the city.
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/04/cbp-releases-video-from-predator-drone-deployed…
Content Type: Examples
As the long Minnesota winter came to an end in March 2021, both protesters and police began preparing for the beginning of tunneling work to build the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. Intended to update the decaying previous structure and double its capacity. Police practiced a variety of crowd control tactics and countering different types of imagined threats, honing their strategies by monitoring social media.
https://theintercept.com/2021/03/23/enbridge-line-3-mississippi-minnesota-police/…
Content Type: Examples
Police in Phoenix, Arizona called leaders of a peaceful protest in October 2020 "targets" while surveilling them with drones, cameras, and vehicles. ABC15 found that police and prosecutors collaborated to charge protesters as a "criminal street gang". Although the charges were later dropped, protest leaders said they had a chilling effect on later protests and caused them to change tactics.
https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/protest-arrests/phoenix-police-called-protesters-…
Content Type: Examples
Documents acquired under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 reveal that staff and student protests against cuts at the University of Sydney were surveilled by both the university administration and police, who have been widely criticised for using excessive force at education protests. The university administration conducted "risk reviews" of protests and looked for links between education protest organisers and other political organisations. Emails include screenshots of…
Content Type: Examples
Over 2020, EFF supported the right to protest without being surveilled by bringing lawsuits, offering protesters legal support, teaching protesters surveillance self-defence, and providing tools for people on the ground to use to determine what equipment their local police departments are using to spy on activists. Via public records requests, EFF discovered that the San Francisco Police Department gained access to over 400 cameras belonging to the Union Square Business Improvement District to…
Content Type: Examples
When Dallas police posted on Twitter asking for videos of the protests taking place after George Floyd's killing, a flood of videos and images of K-pop stars were uploaded to its anonymous iWatch Dallas tip-off app. Law enforcement can call on vast numbers of networked cameras - from cars, food and retail chains that are typically willing to share with police, law enforcement agencies' own networks of surveillance and body cameras as well as object and face recognition software, protesters and…
Content Type: Examples
Despite having promised in 2016 not to facilitate domestic surveillance, the AI startup Dataminr used its firehose access to Twitter to alert law enforcement to social media posts with the latest whereabouts and actions of demonstrators involved in the protests following the killing of George Floyd. Dataminr's investors include the CIA and, previously, Twitter itself. Twitter's terms of service ban software developers from tracking or monitoring protest events. Some alerts were sourced from…
Content Type: Examples
Following the January 6 invasion of the US Capitol Building, federal law enforcement used a wide variety of surveillance technologies to track down participants, including facial recognition, licence plate readers, policy body cameras, and cellphone tracking. While many of the people being tracked and charged are members of white supremacist groups, human rights organizations such as ACLU and EFF are concerned that the level of surveillance was excessive and poses a threat to peaceful protests…
Content Type: Examples
New data emerged in January 2021 to show that the National Guard deployment of more than 43,350 troops during the nationwide demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd was far more extensive than had been realised, and far greater than the 6,200 troops deployed at the Capitol during the forewarned insurrection. At least 20 military surveillance and reconnaissance helicopters flew over protests in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Washington DC, raising concerns about the data…
Content Type: Examples
Peruvian police have used force, arbitrary arrests, undercover infiltrators, tear gas, and forced disappearance against marchers protesting the removal of president Martín Vizcarra. Three protesters have been killed, more than 60 have disappeared, and hundreds have been injured. While the traditional media has either ignored the protests or depicted them as criminal, social media and the internet have been crucial in documenting police abuses via shared images and video. Police have begun using…
Content Type: Examples
Hundreds of emails and documents obtained in response to a freedom of information request by BuzzFeed News show that US federal agents monitored social media for information on planned Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Minneapolis, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and other cities. Researchers and activists (such as EFF) warned that technology-driven surveillance of protesters could set a dangerous precedent and chill assembly and speech, particularly in the case of Black Lives Matter. The…
Content Type: Examples
Human rights activists and Democratic members of the US Congress wrote to top law enforcement officials in the Trump administration to demand they cease surveilling Americans engaging in peaceful protests. Trump and others in his administration called those protesting the killing of George Floyd "domestic terrorists" and "anarchists". Recent efforts to surveil Americans have included facial recognition, automated licence plate readers, and Stingrays, as well as spy planes and drones.
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Content Type: Examples
During the Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020, US police took advantage of a lack of regulation and new technologies to expand the scope of people and platforms they monitor; details typically emerge through lawsuits, public records disclosures, and stories released by police department PR as crime prevention successes. A report from the Brennan Center for Justice highlights New York Police Department threats to privacy, freedom of expression, and due process and the use of a predator…
