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Privacy International intervened in a landmark case brought in the UK courts by asylum seekers against mobile phone seizures and data extraction. Judgment was handed down on 25 March 2022. The High Court found that the secret and blanket policy of the UK Home Office to seize and search migrants' phones breached Article 8 ECHR and data protection laws.

There are few places in the world where an individual is as vulnerable as at the border of a foreign country.

In the rush to respond to Covid-19 and its aftermath, government and companies are exploiting data with few safeguards. PI is acting to ensure that this crisis isn't abused.

Powerful countries encourage and enable other governments to deploy advanced surveillance capabilities without adequate safeguards.

Migrants are bearing the burden and losing agency in their migration experience: their fate is being put in the hands of systems that are feeding the surveillance and data exploitation ecosystem.

Powerful governments are financing, training and equipping countries — including authoritarian regimes — with surveillance capabilities.
 

Aerial surveillance can impose widespread systematic monitoring on specific individuals, groups, and populations infringing upon their right to privacy and associated freedoms, including freedoms of assembly, movement, and protest.

This legal challenge relates to a complaint filed with the UK's Information Commissioner (ICO) against the UK Home Office's policy and practice of using GPS ankle tags to monitor migrants released on immigration bail.

Fighting the GPS tagging of migrants in the UK's 'hostile environment'

This was a campaign to take action with us and write to Priti Patel, the UK Home Secretary, to demand that the Home Office stops spying on asylum seekers through their 'Aspen Card' debit payment card. The campaign is now closed.