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Content type: News & Analysis
Photo: The European Union
On 2 September 2019, Privacy International, together with 60 other organisations, signed an open letter to the European Parliament to express our deep concern about upcoming EU policy proposals which undermine the EU’s founding values of human rights, peace and disarmament.
Since 2017, the EU has diverted funds towards security research and security capacity-building in countries around the world. The proposal for the EU's next budget (2021-2027) will…
Content type: Examples
In October 2018, British home secretary Sajid Javid apologised to more than 400 migrants, who included Gurkha soldiers and Afghans who had worked for the British armed forces, who were forced to provide DNA samples when applying to live and work in the UK. DNA samples are sometimes provided by applicants to prove their relationship to someone already in the UK, but are not supposed to be mandatory. An internal review indicated that more people than the initially estimated 449 had received DNA…
Content type: Impact Case Study
What happened
Since the late 1980s governments across the world have been trying to build identity registries. By the early 1990s, there were similar policies being pursued by a number of governments across the Pacific region, with similar technologies from the same companies. In the mid-90s ID cards became a ‘modern’ policy, implementing smart cards. By 9/11 biometric IDs became the preferred solution to undefinable problems. Then came vast databases of biometrics to identify people — with…