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Content type: News & Analysis
New technologies continue to present great risks and opportunities for any users but for some communities the implications and harms can have severe consequences and one of the sectors facing increasing challenges to keep innovating whilst protecting themselves and the people they serve is the humanitarian sector.
Over the course of engagement with the humanitarian sector, one of our key observations has been how risk assessments undertaken in the sector omitted to integrate a hollistic…
Content type: Long Read
Over the last two decades we have seen an array of digital technologies being deployed in the context of border controls and immigration enforcement, with surveillance practices and data-driven immigration policies routinely leading to discriminatory treatment of people and undermining peoples’ dignity.And yet this is happening with little public scrutiny, often in a regulatory or legal void and without understanding and consideration to the impact on migrant communities at the border and…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International (PI), Fundaciòn Datos Protegidos, Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D) and Statewatch responded to the call for submission of the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance on how digital technologies deployed in the context of border enforcement and administration reproduce, reinforce, and compound racial discrimination.
This submission provides information on specific digital technologies in service of border…
Content type: News & Analysis
Humanitarian organisations are defined by their commitment to core, apolitical principles, including: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence and to “do no harm”.
And yet the ways data and technology are being used in the world today are often far from being apolitical, humane, impartial, neutral and independent, and in many instances many actors are using technology to exploit people, failing to protect and empower many individuals and communities - in particular those most in need…
Content type: Long Read
It was a quiet evening in Agadez, a bustling Saharan city in the centre of Niger. Thirty-five year old Agali Ahmed was sipping tea at a friend’s place, as he often did, when he received a message: police were at his uncle’s house. When he got there, Ahmed saw men in plainclothes, standing around the building’s gate. Inside, more men were searching the apartment. Three white men, who Ahmed guessed were Spanish, asked for his phone and started taking pictures of him. They told him to follow them…
Content type: News & Analysis
Photo credit: Screenshot from video produced by ICRC, ‘What are metadata’, accessible here.
“The platform [Facebook] does not intentionally cause harm to users. Too often, however, Facebook’s business model allows harm to occur.”
The Editorial Board, The Financial Times, 2 December 2018
Imagine if a recipient of humanitarian aid was prevented from accessing a loan because they were deemed ‘uncreditworthy’ for receiving assistance? Or if a refugee was denied asylum…
Content type: News & Analysis
Why is a privacy organisation working with the humanitarian sector, and why does it matter? We may seem like strange bedfellows, but today's ever-growing digital world means that, more and more, people who receive humanitarian assistance are being exposed to unexpected threats.
According to the 2018 Global Humanitarian Overview, there are more than 134 million people across the world in need humanitarian assistance. Of these, about 90.1 million will receive aid of some form. It is…
Content type: Press release
Key Points
A new report by Privacy International and the International Committee of the Red Cross finds that the humanitarian sector’s use of digital and mobile technologies could have detrimental effects for people receiving humanitarian aid.
This is because these digital systems generate a ‘data trail’ that is accessible and exploitable by third parties for non-humanitarian purposes. This metadata can be used to infer extremely intimate details, such as someone’s travel patterns or…
Content type: Report
New technologies continue to present great risks and opportunities for humanitarian action. To ensure that their use does not result in any harm, humanitarian organisations must develop and implement appropriate data protection standards, including robust risk assessments.However, this requires a good understanding of what these technologies are, what risks are associated with their use, and how we can try to avoid or mitigate them. This joint report by Privacy International and the…
Content type: Long Read
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the United Nations-led initiative to define the development agenda. Building on the eight Millennium Development Goals, the SDG’s 17 goals – and the 169 targets – serve as an opportunity to tackle many of the most pressing issues in the world today. The SDGs are also explicitly grounded in human rights. Goal 16 on “peace, justice, and sustainable institutions” aims to “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide…
Content type: News & Analysis
This piece originally appeared here.
We are much more than our physical selves. We are also digital. Every moment we generate more data. Although sometimes this data is under our control, increasingly it is not. This uncontrolled data—this metadata—is often generated as a result of our interactions, movements, sentiments, and even our inaction. Despite being beyond our control, our metadata is still accessible to many. Hardly a day goes by without a news story or global event involving data: a…
Content type: Impact Case Study
What happenedUnder pressure to be more accountable for their use of resources, but also due to the post-9/11 push to track and identify terrorists across the world, the humanitarian and development sectors began increasingly to look to identity registration, including biometrics, and the collection and sharing of vast amounts of data on their beneficiaries. Development funding was supporting the deployment of ID systems, and both sectors were enthralled with ‘big data’ initiatives, all…
Content type: Impact Case Study
What happenedSince 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…
Content type: News & Analysis
13 October 2013
The following is an excerpt from a guest article which appeared on openDemocracy, written by Privacy International's Research Officer, Anna Crowe:
Humanitarian actors often forsake the right to privacy in favour of promoting programmes utilising phones to deliver services, either through a lack of understanding or wilful ignorance as to the risks involved.
It is clear that the massive uptake of mobile phones in developing countries has played a crucial role in the…