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Content type: Long Read
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 released the feature, that the information was inaccurate and incomplete.
Privacy International recently tested the feature to download all ‘Ads and Business’ related information (You can accessed it…
Content type: Case Study
In 2015, a man in Connecticut was charged with murdering his wife based on evidence from her Fitbit. Richard Dabate, the accused, told the police that a masked assailant came into the couple’s suburban home at around 9am on 23 December 2015, overpowering Dabate then shooting his wife as she returned through the garage.
However, the victim’s fitness tracker told a different story. According to data from the device, which uses a digital pedometer to track the wearer’s steps, Dabate’s wife was…
Content type: Long Read
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 monitoring in the Indian context, this article posits health monitoring as surveillance and not merely as a “data problem.” Casting a critical feminist lens, the historicity of surveillance practices…
Content type: Long Read
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is meeting from 10-28 February to review the progress of women’s rights in Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Eritrea, Kiribati, Latvia, Pakistan, Republic of Moldova, and Zimbabwe. At forums like this, the attempts of Heartbeat International to curtail reproductive rights internationally must be highlighted. Heartbeat International is a US-based organisation that is developing and promoting a suite of data intensive technologies…
Content type: Advocacy
TEDIC, InternetLab, Derechos Digitales, Fundación Karisma, Dejusticia, Asociación por los Derechos Civiles and Privacy International welcome the call made by the Special Rapporteurship on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights (ESCER) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to inform the preparation of the Annual Report of the ESCER for the year 2019, which will be presented to the Organization of American States (OAS) during 2020.
This submission aims to outline…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International welcomes this opportunity to submit comments to the FATF consultation. The draft recommendation is an improvement on existing guidance that we have reviewed.
We also welcome the calls of the FATF for accommodations that will relieve burdens upon individuals who are being excluded from the financial sector, as a result of the FATF’s prior recommendations.
PI believes that identity systems must empower people. The initial question surrounding the development of any…
Content type: Explainer
Television offers some of the earliest instances of digital marketing. The majority of television channels rely on commercials and advertisements to maintain their operations. For the past 75 years, TV adverts have been passive transmissions broadcast to viewers, the demographics of the channels audience guiding the kinds of products and services shown during commercial breaks and intermissions. With the changes in the way individuals are now consuming content however, broadcasters are trying…
Content type: Case Study
In early May 2019, it was revealed that a spyware, exploiting a vulnerability in Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging app, had been installed onto Android and iOS phones. The spyware could be used to turn on the camera and mic of the targeted phones and collect emails, messages, and location data. Citizen Lab, the organization that discovered the vulnerability, said that the spyware was being used to target journalists and human rights advocates in different countries around the world. The spyware…
Content type: News & Analysis
In mid-2019, MI5 admitted, during a case brought by Liberty, that personal data was being held in “ungoverned spaces”. Much about these ‘ungoverned spaces’, and how they would effectively be “governed” in the future, remained unclear. At the moment, they are understood to be a ‘technical environment’ where personal data of unknown numbers of individuals was being ‘handled’. The use of ‘technical environment’ suggests something more than simply a compilation of a few datasets or databases.
The…
Content type: Long Read
This piece was written by PI Partner Hiperderecho's Executive Director Miguel Morachimo and originally appeared here. Image from here.
The recent congressional elections in Peru have been different in many ways. This is primarily because the rules that prohibit parties and candidates from advertising on radio and television through paid ads have been applied for the first time. That has led the effort and expenditure on electoral advertising to be focused on alternative platforms, from printed…
Content type: Case Study
Discriminatory laws on the basis of sexual orientation across the globe exist in stark opposition to the principle that the law should be the same for each and every one of us. We are all entitled to the same protections against any discrimination. Equality before the law dictates that there must be a reasonable justification to regulate any aspect of a person’s life.
Laws discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation interfere with our private lives and development. There can be no…
Content type: News & Analysis
On New Year's Day, the Twitter account @HindsightFiles began publishing internal communications and documents from the now defunct SCL Group, dating from 2014-2018. They came from the hard drive of Brittany Kaiser, who held several senior positions at SCL Group including at one of its subsidiaries, Cambridge Analytica, and featured in the Netflix documentary "The Great Hack".
Privacy International first investigated Cambridge Analytica in 2017. We questioned the company's role in the Kenyan…
Content type: Long Read
We are excited to spotlight our Reproductive Rights and Privacy Project!
The Project is focused on researching and exposing organisations that collect and exploit the information of those seeking to exercise their reproductive rights. Working together with PI partners, other international grassroots organisations and NGOs, PI is researching and advocating against this data exploitation.
So, what are reproductive rights?
Sexual and reproductive rights, which are contained within Economic,…
Content type: Case Study
Every one of us has an expectation to be legally protected in the same way, to have access to the same human rights, and to be able to defend those rights in court.
However, for trans and non-binary people, this has not always been the case – and in many places around the world it still isn’t the case. The lack of legal recognition for their gender has had significant consequences.
If the law does not recognise you as the person that you are and treats you as someone you are not then you…
Content type: News & Analysis
Today Advocate General (AG) Campos Sánchez-Bordona of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), issued his opinions (C-623/17, C-511/18 and C-512/18 and C-520/18) on how he believes the Court should rule on vital questions relating to the conditions under which security and intelligence agencies in the UK, France and Belgium could have access to communications data retained by telecommunications providers.
The AG addressed two major questions:
(1) When states seek to impose…
Content type: News & Analysis
Maddie Stone, formally a Senior reverse engineer and tech lead on the Android security team, shockingly revealed a number of examples of how pre-installed apps on Android devices can undermine users privacy and security in her BlackHat USA talk in August 2019. The video of the talk only recently became available to the public in late December 2019.
The apps in question come preloaded on a device when it is purchased and often can't be removed. Stone reveals a litany of abuses carried out by…
Content type: Advocacy
Puede encontrar la carta a continuación. Agregue su voz a esta campaña firmando nuestra petición si cree que es hora de que Google deje de permitir la explotación.
Nota: Esta carta también está disponible en francés e inglés.
Estimado Sr. Pichai,
Nosotros, los firmantes, estamos de acuerdo con usted: la privacidad no puede ser un lujo reservado para las personas que tienen la capacidad de pagar por ella.
Sin embargo, los socios de Android Partner –que utilizan la marca y la imagen de…
Content type: Advocacy
You can find the letter below. Add your voice to this campaign by signing our petition if you believe that its time Google stopped enabling exploitation.
Note: This letter is also available in French and Spanish
Dear Mr. Pichai,
We, the undersigned, agree with you: privacy cannot be a luxury offered only to those people who can afford it.
And yet, Android Partners - who use the Android trademark and branding - are manufacturing devices that contain pre-installed apps that cannot be deleted…
Content type: Advocacy
Vous pouvez trouver la lettre ci-dessous. Ajoutez votre voix à cette campagne en signant notre pétition si vous pensez qu'il est temps que Google cesse d'activer l'exploitation.
Ce contenu est également disponible en anglais et en espagnol.
Cher M. Pichai,
Nous, les organisations signataires, sommes d’accord avec vous :
la vie privée n’est pas un luxe, offert seulement à ceux qui en ont les moyens.
Pourtant, les « Android Partners » – qui utilisent la marque déposée…
Content type: News & Analysis
Send a Freedom of Information Request to your local police for to see if they are using cloud extraction here.On 12 December 2018 a member of Lancashire Police Department UK told viewers of a Cellebrite webinar that they were using Cellebrite's Cloud Analyser to obtain cloud based 'evidence'. In response to a Freedom of Information request Hampshire Constabulary told Privacy International they were using Cellebrite Cloud Analyser. They are not alone. In Cellebrite's…
Content type: Long Read
Mobile phones remain the most frequently used and most important digital source for law enforcement investigations. Yet it is not just what is physically stored on the phone that law enforcement are after, but what can be accessed from it, primarily data stored in the Cloud.
Cellebrite, a prominent vendor of surveillance technology used to extract data from mobile phones, notes in its Annual Trend Survey that in approximately half of all investigations, cloud data ‘appears’ and that…
Content type: Press release
A large number of apps on smart phones store data in the cloud. Law enforcement can access these vast troves of data from devices and from popular apps with the push of a button using cloud extraction technology.
Mobile phones remain the most frequently used and most important digital source for law enforcement investigations. Yet it is not just what is physically stored on the phone that law enforcement are after, but what can be accessed from it, primarily data stored in the Cloud.…
Content type: Case Study
Slavery, servitude, and forced labour are absolutely forbidden today, as is anything that seeks to undermine or limit that restriction. The horrific reality, however, is that modern slavery remains a significant global issue.
Human trafficking is one form of modern slavery. It involves the recruitment, harbouring or transporting of people into a situation of exploitation through the use of violence, deception or coercion and forcing them to work against their will.
Human traffickers do…