Long Reads
The Israeli intelligence services have been tracking Covid-19 patients for contact tracing. As the High Court condemned the measure, what can the rest of the world learn from this controversial experiment?
UPDATE 21/07/2020: On Monday July 20th, the Israeli parliament approved a new bill allowing the Ministry of Health to rely again on the Intelligence Services to track people who may have been exposed to Covid 19 when the number of new cases reaches 200 and above per day. The authorisation is then
Review of approach of a number of platforms (TikTok, SnapChat, Pintrest, LinkedIn, Spotify, Amazon and Reddit) to political advertising - including targeting more broadly and ads transparency (for users and researchers).
This review is based on information in the public domain, primarily that of the platforms themselves. It is not exhaustive and this field moves with speed - however, it aims to offer a snapshot of approaches and practices. TikTok TikTok is a short-form video app (owned by ByteDance) which allows
This Privacy International report documents 10 data exploitative technologies and tactics being developed to delay or curtail access to reproductive healthcare globally.
The organised opposition to sexual and reproductive rights has gone digital. Data exploitative tech is being developed that is capable of obtaining vast amounts of intimate information about people’s reproductive health, and delaying or curtailing access to reproductive healthcare. Technology
Increased trust makes every response to COVID-19 stronger. Lack of trust and confidence can undermine everything. Should we trust governments and industry with their app solutions at this moment of global crisis?
‘Let’s build an app for that’ has become the response to so many things. It’s no surprise it’s happening now. Apps are notorious for their lack of security and privacy safeguards, exploiting people’s data and devices. Now we’re being asked to trust
Following Margaret Atwood's comments that the response to Covid-19 does not amount to "deliberate totalitarianism” we wrote an open letter to her in response, agreeing with her but noting that we may be sleepwalking into a dystopia created by accident rather than design.
On 15th April Margaret Atwood, author of the Handmaid's Tale, gave an interview to BBC Radio 5 Live where she commented that ‘people may be making arrangements that aren’t too pleasant, but it’s not a deliberate totalitarianism’. You can read more about the interview in the Guardian. While we agree
Africa is a testing ground for technologies produced elsewhere: as a result, personal data of its people are increasingly stored in hundreds of databases.
Commercial interests seem to often overshadow the EU’s stance as a global privacy leader. After looking at Europes's shady funds to border forces in the Sahel area, Niger's new biometric voting system, and attempts to dismantle smugglers networks powered by Europe's gifts of surveillance, freelance
Universities in the UK and China, the Met Police, and surveillance companies are working on a government-funded programme developing "unconstrained face recognition technology".
The UK’s Metropolitan Police have began formally deploying Live Facial Recognition technology across London, claiming that it will only be used to identify serious criminals on “bespoke ‘watch lists’” and on “ small, targeted” areas. Yet, at the same time, the UK’s largest police force is also
PI presents its analysis of the Huduma Numba judgment in three parts: the clear wins, the parts that make some small steps forward but could have been better and the dissapointing losses.
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
Facebook "Download Your Information" feature only gives you part of the picture. Information about advertisers uploading lists with your personal information is limited in time and prevents users from exercising their rights
In 2018, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook announced the “Download Your Information” feature allowing users to download all the information that the company have on them since the creation of the account. All of it? It doesn’t seem so. Concerns were quickly raised when Facebook
CIS, PI's partner in India, posits health monitoring as surveillance and not merely as a “data problem.”
This piece was written by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon, who are policy officers at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in India. The piece was originally published on the website Economic Policy Weekly India here. In order to bring out certain conceptual and procedural problems with health