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Content type: Long Read
29th March 2021
This piece was written by Joan López, researcher at Fundación Karisma, and originally posted on their website.
The uncertainty of this crisis has become an opportunity for the implementation of technological solutions to complex issues instead of coherent decision-making processes. During the social and economic crisis caused by Covid-19, the National Development Office (DNP in Spanish) in Colombia, in just two weeks, set up an unconditional cash transfer system for 3 million citizens. The…
Content type: Long Read
23rd March 2021
This article was written by Sameet Panda and Vipul Kumar.
Over the last couple of years, there has been a push towards digitising the PDS, which includes linkage with the Aadhaar (India’s biometric identification system) and maintenance of digital records at Fair Price Shops that distribute the ration, among other initiatives. Without taking into account the availability of appropriate digital infrastructure and access among beneficiaries, these initiatives have been unable to solve…
Content type: Video
9th January 2021
Links!
If you're worried about your devices and a controlling partner, we have some tips for you; you can also find out more at women's aid's website.
Find out more about our court victory.
Listen to Dr David Crepaz-Keay from the Mental health Foundation talk about mental health and tech
Tom on immunity passports
Lucy on marketing and maternity and low cost tech
Eva and smart cities
And support PI's work at support.privacyinternational.org
You can listen and subscribe to the podcast…
Content type: Case Study
23rd October 2020
Sebastián Gómez is a land rights defender. He is based in Colombia.
Qn: Please briefly describe your work and the issues/topics you work on.
I am researcher for an organisation working on topics related to the defense of the territory and environmental protection. We operate in different regions, including those which have been historically subjected to violence due to the armed conflict and which are now experiencing a spike in a range of environmental conflicts. Our work consists of…
Content type: Case Study
23rd October 2020
amaBhungane is an independent, non-profit newsroom based in South Africa. amaBhungane plays a key role in exposing corruption, promoting transparency and accountability at all levels of government. In recent years, amaBhungane has been at the forefront of privacy litigation in amaBhungane Centre and Sole Stephen v. Minister of Justice and Correctional Services and others, a challenge to South Africa’s expansive surveillance laws.
Qn: Please briefly describe your work and the issues/topics you…
Content type: Case Study
23rd October 2020
Ananda Badudu is an activist, musician and former journalist. In September 2019, he started a crowdfunding campaign page to support student protesters taking part in demonstrations against the Indonesian House of Representatives.
Qn: Please briefly describe your work and the issues/topics you work on.
I’ve been full-time musician for 2 years. Before that I was a journalist from 2010 to 2016, first at Tempo, then at Vice. In late September 2019, I took part in a crowd-funding campaign in…
Content type: Case Study
23rd October 2020
Centro Prodh is a non-profit civil association which promotes human rights, and has been involved in some of the most emblematic cases in Mexico. The impact of their work is only matched by the severity of surveillance threats they face. In his end-of-mission statement after a visit to Mexico, the former Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders expressed specific concern about Centro Prodh in light of its being targeted for its work on enforced disappearances, extrajudicial…
Content type: Case Study
17th September 2020
The Peruvian government has a history of collaboration with the private sector in developing technology with the alleged purpose of providing greater security to citizens. The most recent example, the smartphone application "Peru En Tus Manos" launched in the context of the Covid-19 crisis, has been developed in a similar fashion and currently collects geolocation data on more than a million users. Although Peru has a proper legal framework for public private partnerships, developments are…
Content type: Case Study
17th September 2020
Como is one of the most advanced cities in Italy in the use of facial recognition technology (FRT). An investigation for the Italian Wired magazine published in June 2020 exposed how the system had been bought, installed and tested for months with little transparency and despite the lack of a clear legal framework.
The investigation was entirely based on tools available to everyone, such as Freedom of Information requests (FOI requests. Similar to PI’s campaign 'Unmasking policing, inc', it…
Content type: Case Study
25th June 2020
Facial recognition technology (FRT) is fairly present in our daily lives, as an authentication method to unlock phones for example. Despite having useful applications, FRT can also be just another technology used by those in power to undermine our democracies and carry out mass surveillance. The biometric data collected by FRT can be as uniquely identifying as a fingerprint or DNA. The use of this technology by third parties, specially without your consent, violates your right to privacy.
The…
Content type: Case Study
25th June 2020
The Ugandan government has a running contract with the Chinese tech giant, Huawei, to supply and install CCTV cameras along major highways within the capital, Kampala, and other cities.
While details of the contract remain concealed from the public, the Uganda Police Force (UPF) released a statement, simply confirming its existing business partnership for telecommunication and surveillance hardware, and software between the security force and Huawei. However, it is not clear whether the…
Content type: Case Study
25th June 2020
Well into the 21st century, Serbia still does not have a strong privacy culture, which has been left in the shadows of past regimes and widespread surveillance. Even today, direct police and security agencies’ access to communications metadata stored by mobile and internet operators makes mass surveillance possible.
However, a new threat to human rights and freedoms in Serbia has emerged. In early 2019, the Minister of Interior and the Police Director announced that Belgrade will receive “a…
Content type: Long Read
18th June 2020
Monday, 16 June 2025
It’s 7:33 am. Lila’s GoogBit watch vibrates. “You got 6 hours and 57 minutes of sleep last night, including 2 hours and 12 minutes of deep sleep”, the watch reads. “In total, you tossed and turned for 15 minutes only”. Taking into account Lila’s online browsing activity, her sleep pattern, the recent disruptions in some of her other biorhythms, as well as her daily schedule, GoogBit watch has calculated the very best minute to wake her up.
Content type: Long Read
16th June 2020
Introduction
In August 2019, when Facebook announced a few new features for advertisers such as ads in search, PI decided to take an in-depth look at what features the company offers its users when it comes to understanding its advertising practices. One of these features, which caught our attention is Facebook Ads Preference, a tool that among other things, lists businesses/advertisers that have uploaded your personal data to target you with (or exclude you from) ads on the platform.
Content type: Examples
7th April 2020
The whistleblower said they were unable to find any legitimate reason for the high volume of the requests for location information. “There is no other explanation, no other technical reason to do this. Saudi Arabia is weaponising mobile technologies,” the whistleblower claimed.
The data leaked by the whistleblower was also seen by telecommunications and security experts, who confirmed they too believed it was indicative of a surveillance campaign by Saudi Arabia.
The data shows requests for…
Content type: Examples
13th November 2019
A woman was killed by a spear to the chest at her home in Hallandale Beache, Florida, north of Miami, in July. Witness "Alexa" has been called yet another time to give evidence and solve the mystery. The police is hoping that the smart assistance Amazon Echo, known as Alexa, was accidentally activated and recorded key moments of the murder. “It is believed that evidence of crimes, audio recordings capturing the attack on victim Silvia Crespo that occurred in the main bedroom … may be found on…
Content type: Examples
16th September 2019
A new investigative report from Sharona Coutts at Rewire exposed how anti-choice groups, including at least one adoption agency, were resorting to using a technology called "geofencing" to find and then target individuals they believe are considering abortion, with targeted ads.
Two groups, a clearinghouse that operates many crisis pregnancy centers and a large adoption agency called Bethany Christian Services, were reported to have hired Copley Advertising to provide them with this targeted…
Content type: Examples
16th September 2019
Ahead of the Irish referendum to amend the Constitutions of Ireland to allow the parliament to legislative for abortion which took place in May 2018, Google decided to stop all advertising relating to the referendum on all of its advertising platforms, including AdWords and YouTube.
This followed decisions by Facebook to no longer accept advertising relating to the referendum funded by foreign organisations outside Ireland, and Twitter not allowing any advertising in relation to the…
Content type: Examples
16th September 2019
Bethany Christian Services, an international pregnancy support and adoption agency, is launching a programme with Copley Advertising to send targeted ads to individuals visiting Planned Parenthood clinics, abortion clinics, methadone clinics and high-risk areas (AHPA). The targeting will be done through the use of geo fencing based on smartphones located within the selected locations.
Source: https://www.liveaction.org/news//adoption-agency-send-pro-life-ads-smartphones-inside-abortion-clinics…
Content type: Examples
12th September 2019
Denmark released 32 prisoners as part of an ongoing review of 10,700 criminal cases, after serious questions arose regarding the reliability of geolocation data obtained from mobile phone operators. Among the various problems with the software used to convert the phone data into usable evidence, it was found that the system connected the phones to several towers at once, sometimes hundreds of kilometres apart, recorded the origins of text messages incorrectly and got the location of specific…
Content type: Examples
29th August 2019
US campaigners supported by the Catholic church are promoting the app Femm, which collects sensitive data about women's sexual lives and aim to scare women from using hormonal birth control, in rural Nigeria. Femm received a $100,000 from the Papal Foundation to promote their app.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jul/15/femm-menstruation-tracking-app-nigeria-anti-pill-campaignersus-
Author: Jessica Glenza
Publication: The Guardian
Content type: Examples
29th August 2019
Following pressure from civil society and pro-abortion groups, Facebook announced on May 8th 208 a ban on foreign ads related to the Irish referendum on abortion. Facebook said they were being consistent with Irish electoral law.
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-bans-foreign-ads-for-eighth-amendment-referendum-1.3487895
Author: Ciara O'Brien
Publication: Irish Times
Content type: Examples
29th August 2019
Una Mullally writes about the online campaign led by the anti-abortion groups Protect the 8th and Undecided8 and their targeting of undecided voters in Ireland. She spoke to Facebook about their role in the spreading of those campaign and to campaigner Gavin Sheridan, who has demanded transparency to control the role of big tech platforms in democratic processes in Ireland.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/the-poisonous-online-campaign-to-defeat-the-abortion-referendum-1.3486236
Author: Una…
Content type: Examples
29th August 2019
In this piece Gavin Sheridan, transparency campaigner and CEO of legal intelligence company Vizlegal, argues for the need for a regulatory oversight to control the impact big tech companies and force them to be more transparent.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/13/ireland-abortion-mark-zuckerberg-referendum
Author: Gavin Sheridan
Publication: The Guardian
Content type: Examples
27th August 2019
A 17-year-old Palestinian resident of Lebanon, Ismail B. Ajjawi, was deported shortly after he arrived at Boston Airport, where he was due to start attending Harvard University the following week.
Immigration officers subjected him to hours of questioning — at one point leaving to search his phone and computer — according to a written statement by Ajjawi. According to the student, his visa was revoked because of content posted by some social media contacts.
The student alleges that…
Content type: Examples
13th August 2019
A February 2019 study of facial recognition systems found that these systems are not designed with transgender and nonbinary people in mind. Researcher Os Keyes studied 30 years of facial recognition research, including 58 separate research papers, and found that more than 90% of the time researchers followed a binary gender model, more than 70% of the time viewed gender as immutable, and, in gender-specific research, more than 80% of the time viewed gender as a purely physiological construct.…
Content type: Examples
13th August 2019
In 2018, Brian Hofer, the chair of Oakland's Privacy Advisory Commission, filed suit after police wrongfully stopped him at gunpoint because their automated license plate recognition system, supplied by Vigilant Solutions, indicated that the rental car he was driving had been stolen. The car had in fact been stolen some months earlier, but been recovered. Despite such errors, police claim that the technology has helped reduce crime, identify stolen vehicles, and identify and arrest suspects.…
Content type: Examples
13th August 2019
In 2018, to prove how easily soldiers' real-world actions can be manipulated via social media, researchers at NATO's Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (StratCom) conducted a red-team exercise in which they "catfished" members of the armed forces. Using information collected from Facebook profiles and people search websites, the researchers created targeted advertising to draw soldiers to phony Facebook pages mimicking those service members use to connect with each other. In the…
Content type: Examples
13th August 2019
In February 2019, after investigative journalists used social media posts to investigate the country's hidden role in conflicts such as those in Ukraine and Syria, Russia began moving to ban its soldiers from posting any information that would expose their whereabouts or their role in the military. The ban would include photographs, video, geolocation data, and other information, and prohibit soldiers from sharing information about other soldiers and their relatives.
https://www.reuters.com/…
Content type: Examples
13th August 2019
In 2018, repossession services in the US were experiencing a boom in business as the number of Americans failing to keep up with their car payments reached its highest point since 2012. One of these, Ohio-based Relentless Recovery, was increasing its hit rate by equipping its agents' vehicles with cameras to help it build a database of every license plate in the state along with the locations where the vehicles may be easily found. Repo agents collect most of the billions of license plate scans…