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Content type: Long Read
Now more than ever with a global pandemic happening, our lives are being shaped by our interaction with the digital world. Work meetings on Zoom followed by Skype with family before a quick run with your favourite running app and a Google search for your next meal: technologies and services offer us a lot and greatly improve our daily lives. But what's the real cost of these tools we rely on so much?
A lot of these companies, especially those offering free services, collect data about you. It…
Content type: Examples
Article extract:
"A meaty first report by the UK parliamentary committee that’s been running an inquiry into online disinformation since fall 2017, including scrutinizing how people’s personal information was harvested from social media services like Facebook and used for voter profiling and the targeting of campaign ads — and whose chair, Damian Collins — is a member of the UK’s governing Conservative Party, contains one curious omission.
Among the many issues the report raises are privacy…
Content type: Examples
Article extract:
"Ireland's two largest anti-abortion campaigns are facing questions over privacy after a BuzzFeed News analysis found that personal user data gathered by both of their apps can be shared with an international network of conservative and religious groups that includes the US National Rifle Association.
The Save the 8th campaign and the LoveBoth Project are at the forefront of the campaign to prevent the repeal of the Eighth Amendment of Ireland's constitution – which makes…
Content type: Long Read
Among the many challenges of 2020, the impact on elections around the world kept us all on the edge of our seats. 75 countries postponed national and local elections due to Covid 19. Of the elections that went ahead, we saw Covid safe measures at polling stations (South Korea led the way forward in April) an increase in postal voting (who can forget the USA, but also Poland) and political parties in Uganda conducting "virtual" campaigns as mass rallies and in person campaign meetings were…
Content type: Long Read
Este informe está disponible en español.
Most national ID or identifying documents include a gender marker. This is often known as a 'sex marker,' even though the term is inaccurate. The presence of such markers, especially on birth certificates, contribute to our society’s emphasis on gender as a criterion for assigning identities, roles and responsibilities within society. With gender being such a determining and dominant identifier, it puts it at the centre of so many arrays of our…
Content type: Press release
Privacy International announces the launch of two reports as part of its work on Defending Democracy and Dissent.
The report Online Political Ads: A study of inequality in transparency standards builds on our 2019 research findings and delves into the adverse impacts of non-existent or limited transparency on democracy based on two case-studies developed by our partners InternetLab and ELSAM.
The report, Micro-Targeting in Political Campaigns,…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the US, the Federal Trade Commission and various states attorneys general have opened investigations against alleged anti-competitive practices of Facebook and Google, while demands for stronger regulation both in anti-trust and privacy laws are growing. The EU has unveiled its twin proposed legislation, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, aimed at increasing the responsibilities of big platforms and seeking to address the power imbalance they have over other businesses and…
Content type: Report
This paper examines the various legal frameworks governing micro-targeting in political campaigns in six states: Canada, Brazil, France, Italy, Spain and the UK. It aims to assess national practices as well as point out gaps in their respective frameworks. The paper commences by examining how micro-targeting is defined and thereafter examines the legal provisions applicable to micro-targeting activities.
To do this in an accessible way, the paper follows and analyses the series of activities…
Content type: Long Read
On 8 January 2021, the UK High Court issued a judgment in the case of Privacy International v. Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) appeared as interested parties to the case.
After our initial reaction, below we answer some of the main questions relating to the case.
NOTE: This post reflects our initial reaction to the judgment and may be updated.
What’s the ruling all about?
In…
Content type: News & Analysis
Today, the UK High Court has quashed a decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) and held that section 5 of the Intelligence Services Act (ISA) 1994 does not permit the issue of general warrants to authorise property interference and certain forms of computer hacking.
The Court referred to cases dating back to the 18th century, which demonstrate the common law’s insistence that the Government cannot search private premises without lawful authority even in the national security…