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Content type: Explainer
5th August 2019
Recently the role of social media and search platforms in political campaigning and elections has come under scrutiny. Concerns range from the spread of disinformation, to profiling of users without their knowledge, to micro-targeting of users with tailored messages, to interference by foreign entities, and more. Significant attention has been paid to the transparency of political ads - what are companies doing to provide their users globally with meaningful transparency into how they're being…
Content type: News & Analysis
3rd April 2019
PI has today written to Google, Instagram, Snapchat, TicTok, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp to ask for more information about their steps to tell people why they are seeing ads. Facebook recently announced expanding the company's ad transparency measures to include more information about why an ad or content appears in a user's newsfeed. While Facebook has a lot more to do, it is important that all technology companies provide advertising transparency.
Recently, we have seen how platforms…
Content type: Video
21st April 2019
In April 2019 Ukraine held presidential elections. We were in Kyiv to hear about people's experience monitoring online disinformation – a big issue in this election. Activists in Ukraine have long experience navigating the noisy and chaotic environment that disinformation creates – which comes not only from Russia, but also from domestic politicians and others with money and power.
At PI, we’re working to make sure that the way data is used by political actors and advertisers does…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
A December 2018 report prepared by the Oxford Internet Institute's Computational propaganda Research Project and the network analysis firm Graphika for the US Senate Intelligence Committee found that the campaign conducted by Russia's Internet Research Agency during the 2016 US presidential election used every major social media platform to deliver messages in words, images, and videos to help elect Donald Trump - and stepped up efforts to support him once he assumed office. The report relied…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
Facebook's latest tool for inspecting political ads showed that in the run-up to the US mid-term elections in November 2018, many of the same politicians who had been questioning Facebook about privacy and leaked user data were spending campaign funds on advertisements on the service. Between 2014 and 2018, the digital percentage of political spending rose from 1% to 22% (or about $1.9 billion); between May and November 2018 political spending on Facebook and its subsidiaries came to nearly $…
Content type: Examples
9th February 2019
A flaw in the official 2018 UK Conservative Party conference app granted both read and write access to the private data of senior party members, including cabinet ministers, to anyone who logged in by second-guessing the email address they used to sign into the app. Twitter users claimed that one leading politician, Boris Johnson, had his avatar briefly replaced by a pornographic image, while another, Michael Gove, had his replaced by that of media magnate Rupert Murdoch. The app was created by…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
In November 2018, the UK government announced that 11 local authorities across England would participate in Voter ID pilots in the interest of gaining "further insight into how best to ensure the security of the voting process and reduce the risk of voter fraud". Five local authorities participated in pilots in the 2017 general election. The new pilots will test four models of identification checks: photo ID (Pendle, East Staffordshire, Woking), photo and non-photo ID (Ribble Valley, Broxtowe,…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
On January 9, 2019 the UK Information Commissioner's Office fined SCL Elections, also known as Cambridge Analytica, £15,000 for failure to comply with an enforcement notice the ICO issued in May 2018 ordering the company to respond in full to a subject access request submitted by US-based academic David Carroll. The company was also required to pay £6,000 in costs and a victim surcharge of £170. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham noted that UK data protection laws apply to all data…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
The results of a year-long review issued by the UK Information Commissioner's Office in November 2018 uncovered a "disturbing disregard for voters' personal privacy" on the part of 30 organisations, including social media platforms, political parties, data brokers, and credit reference agencies. Based on information uncovered during the investigation, the ICO sent 11 warning letters requiring action by the main political parties, and announced its intention to conduct audits; issued an…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
A 2018 study found that Twitter bots played a disproportionate role in spreading the false claim, made by US President Donald Trump shortly after winning the election but losing the popular vote in November 2016, that 3 million illegal immigrants had voted for Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. After examining 14 million messages shared on Twitter between May 2016 and May 2017, Indiana University researchers found that just 6% of Twitter accounts identified as bots spread 31% of "low-…
Content type: Examples
30th April 2019
The Five Star Movement, a populist party, which is currently in power along with the League in Italy initially grew out of Il Blog delle Stelle (formerly Beppe Grillo’s blog). The Five Star Movement was founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, along with Gianroberto Casaleggio, a web strategist in 2009. As well as the blog and The Five Star Movement’s heavy use of social media, it consults its supporters on candidates, policies and partnerships via a software system/ internet platform called Rousseau…
Content type: Advocacy
17th July 2019
Democratic engagement is increasingly mediated by digital technology. Whether through the use of social media platforms for political campaigning, biometric registration of voters and e-voting, police monitoring of political rallies and demonstrations using facial recognition, and other surveillance methods, technology is now infused into the political process.
These technologies rely on collecting, storing, and analysing personal information to operate. Much recent debate around elections has…
Content type: Advocacy
30th July 2019
On 26 July 2019, Privacy International sent the attached written evidence submission to the UK All Parliamentary Party Group on Electoral Campaigning Transparency.
In the UK, All-Party Groups (APPGs) are informal groups of Members of both the House of Commons and House of Lords with a common interest in particular issues.
Content type: Advocacy
29th October 2019
In October 2019, PI responded to the UK Information Commissioner’s (ICO) consultation on a draft Code of Practice for the use of personal data in political campaigning.
This follows on from PI's submission in December 2018, to the ICO’s Call for Views.
PI welcomes the draft Code of Practice as a first step. However, much remains to be done to close the implementation and enforcement gap and strengthen existing regulatory frameworks.
In response to the ICO’s questions, PI’s submission calls…
Content type: Advocacy
30th September 2019
PI is increasingly concerned that democratic participation can be inhibited by novel and unhindered surveillance both by governments and companies. To safeguard our rights, earlier this year, we launched our work programme, Defending Democracy and Dissent, which aims to investigate the role technology plays in facilitating and/or hindering everyone's participation in civic society.
This submission to the House of Lords covers PI’s views on:
How digital tech has changed the way democracy works…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
In November 2018, the Spanish senate approved 220-21 an online data protection law intended to ensure compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation with an added amendment that allowed political parties to use personal data obtained from web pages and other publicly accessible sources for political purposes during campaign periods. Spain's Platform for the Defence of Freedom of Information criticised the law's potential to allow parties to create ideological profiles and emulate the…
Content type: Long Read
18th April 2019
This image was found here.
Spain is holding a national general election on April 28 (its third in four years). Four weeks later Spaniards will again go to the polls to vote in the European Parliament elections. At Privacy International we are working to investigate and challenge the exploitation of people’s data in the electoral cycle including in political campaigns. This includes looking at the legal frameworks governing the use of data by political parties and their digital campaigns.
The…
Content type: Long Read
3rd October 2019
An analysis of what Facebook, Google, and Twitter have done to provide users with political ad transparency as of September 2019. Our full analysis is linked below.
Recently the role of social media and search platforms in political campaigning and elections has come under scrutiny. Concerns range from the spread of disinformation, to profiling of users without their knowledge, to micro-targeting of users with tailored messages, to interference by foreign entities, and more. Significant…
Content type: Examples
30th April 2019
In the lead up to the 2017 German federal election (Bundestagswahl), all political parties used social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and e-mails as platforms to reach voters.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) reportedly hired a Texas-based company for their campaign. Harris Media is known for their work with Republican, far-right and nationalist candidates in the US and worldwide. In 2017, Privacy International revealed that Harris Media was behind the…
Content type: Examples
30th April 2019
During the primary elections in November 2016, the former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, reportedly used an app, called Knockin, that made it possible to identify and geolocate supporters for door-to-door campaigning. Based on a report by the French Radio RMC, the app would harvest public data about anyone that liked a page or a post that the candidate put on his campaign page in order to find the supporter's address. Door-to-door volunteers were then able to see on the app the address and…
Content type: Advocacy
14th June 2019
In considering the impact of online targeting, it is essential that the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation have due regard for privacy as a fundamental right (as enshrined in UK, European, and International Law).
Privacy is essential to the protection of autonomy and human dignity, serving as the foundation upon which other human rights are built. For people to fully participate in democratic society, developments in law and technologies must strengthen and not undermine peoples’ ability to…
Content type: Advocacy
14th June 2019
In early June 2019, PI engaged in the UK's Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation consultation regarding online targeting. PI focused its submission on the use of targeting in online political and issue-based advertising, and the collection and use of data to target people online.
In considering the impact of online targeting, it is essential that the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation have due regard for privacy as a fundamental right (as enshrined in UK, European, and International Law).…
Content type: Advocacy
30th April 2019
In December 2018, PI responded to the UK Information Commissioner's (ICO) Call for Views on a Code of Practice for the use of personal information in political campaigns.
The consultation followed on from the ICO's policy report Democracy Disrupted?, published in July 2018, which recommended that the Government should legislate at the earliest opportunity to introduce a statutory Code of Practice under the Data Protection Act 2018 for the use of personal information in campaigns.
Although not…
Content type: Advocacy
11th February 2019
UPDATE 13 February: Facebook announced that it would open up its Ad Archive API next month. Read Mozilla's statement about the response here.
On 11 February 2019, Privacy International joined Mozilla and 36 organisations in an open letter to Facebook call on Facebook to make good on its commitments to provide more transparency around political advertising ahead of the 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections.
Specifically, our open letter urges Facebook to:
Roll out a functional, open Ad Archive API…
Content type: News & Analysis
16th December 2019
In the run up to the UK General Election on 12 December 2019, Privacy International, joined by other organisations called on political parties to come clean about their use of data. The lack of response to these demands combined with other evidence gathered by groups during the run up to the election demonstrates that current regulations are not fit for the digital era.
This briefing to which Privacy International contributed together with Demos, the Computational Propaganda Project at the…
Content type: Press release
31st October 2019
Privacy International, Open Rights Group, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Fair Vote, Who Targets Me? and Demos have today written to all the main UK political parties, demanding that they are transparent with the public about how they are using voters’ personal data in their electioneering. Twitter's announcement yesterday of their ban on political advertising is just the latest wake up call to politicians about the risks to democracy of personal data driven microtargeting of political…
Content type: Examples
30th April 2019
NationBuilder is an American political campaigning software company, which offers a fully integrated suite of tools for the organization of a campaign, and outreach through e-mail, telephone, social media, and traditional door-to-door campaigning. Many candidates in the 2017 French presidential elections were reported as using their services. Among others, the company offers a functionality called 'match'. When users provide their email address on a campaign's website, 'match' allows the…
Content type: Examples
22nd May 2019
Political ads on Facebook are meant to be marked with a disclaimer that says who paid for the ad, as well as be archived into the platform’s ad library, where users are able to see more information about how an ad was targeted. It’s important to note that the ‘who paid for the ad’ requirement is loose, meaning that a generic organisation name could be used, instead of a name that ties the ad to an interest group, for example. These modest requirements of ads transparency came in the wake of…
Content type: Advocacy
2nd August 2019
Dear Chair and Committee colleagues,
Privacy International is an international NGO, based in London, which works with partners around the world to challenge state and corporate surveillance and data exploitation. As part of our work, we have a dedicated programme “Defending Democracy and Dissent” where we advocate for limits on data exploitation throughout the electoral cycle.
We have been closely following the important work of the Committee. Prompted by the additional evidence provided to…
Content type: Examples
14th April 2019
In 2014, when the the far-right party of French politician Marine Le Pen needed cash, the loan of €9.4 million came from First Czech-Russian Bank, which was founded in the early 2000s as a joint venture between a Czech state bank and a Russian lender and went on to come under the personal ownership of Russian financier Roman Popov and obtain a European license via a subsidiary in the Czech Republic. Two and a half months after the Le Pen loan was signed, a Mediapart investigative journalist…