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Content type: Advocacy
BackgroundThe Snowden revelations and subsequent litigation have repeatedly identified unlawful state surveillance by UK agencies. In response, the UK Parliament passed the highly controversial Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (IPA), which authorised massive, suspicionless surveillance on a scale never seen before, with insufficient safeguards or independent oversight.Privacy International led legal challenges to this mass surveillance regime both before and after the Act became law. The Act…
Content type: Long Read
In the UK, successive government ministers and members of parliament have made emotive proclamations about the malaise of "public sector fraud".
This year, former Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey said that the welfare system "is not a cash machine for callous criminals and it’s vital that the government ensures money is well spent...[and] fraud is an ever-present threat."
In 2013, the UK's minister for the disabled made numerous claims that there were "vast numbers of bogus disabled […
Content type: Report
Privacy International’s submissions for the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration inspection of the Home Office Satellite Tracking Service Programme
The Home Office have introduced 24/7 electronic monitoring and collection of the location data of migrants via GPS ankle tags. This seismic change cannot be overstated. The use of GPS tags and intention to use location data, kept for six years after the tag is removed, in immigration decision-making goes far beyond the mere…
Content type: News & Analysis
What happened
On 22 July 2021, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) issued a declaration on our challenge to the UK bulk communications regime finding that section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 (since repealed by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016) was incompatible with EU law human rights standards. The result of the judgment is that a decade’s worth of secret data capture has been held to be unlawful. The unlawfulness would have remained a secret but for PI’s work.
You…
Content type: Examples
A British freedom of information tribunal ruled that for national security reasons police in England and Wales may refuse to say whether they are using Stingrays, also known as IMSI-catchers, which are capable of tracking thousands of mobile phones and intercepting their calls, text messages, and other data. In 2016, the Bristol Cable found that police forces had bought hundreds of thousands of these devices disguised in public spending data by the acronym CCDC. Privacy International, which…
Content type: Examples
The Northamptonshire Police reported a surge in calls from people reporting their neighbours for exercising more than once a day, holding barbecues in their back yards, or failing to cough into a tissue. Nick Adderley said his officers will issue penalty notices if necessary, but thought it important to first educate the public.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-52052830
Writer: BBC
Publication: BBC
Content type: Examples
UK: O2 shares aggregated location data with government to test compliance with distancing guidelines
Mobile network operator O2 is providing aggregated data to the UK government to analyse anonymous smartphone location data in order to show people are following the country's social distancing guidelines, particularly in London, which to date accounts for about 40% of the UK's confirmed cases and 30% of deaths. The project is not designed to monitor individuals. Lessons from the impact on London of travel restrictions could then be applied in the rest of the country. The government says it has…
Content type: Examples
BT, owner of UK mobile operator EE, is in talks with the government about using its phone location and usage data to monitor whether coronavirus limitation measures such as asking the public to stay at home are working. The information EE supplies would be delayed by 12 to 24 hours, and would provide the ability to create movement maps that show patterns. The data could also feed into health services' decisions, and make it possible to send health alerts to the public in specific locations.…
Content type: Examples
The coronavirus action plan announced on March 3, alongside many measures for managing the NHS in the crisis, will also allow the Investigatory Powers Commissioner to appoint judicial commissioners (JCs) on a temporary basis in the event that there are insufficient JCs available to operate the system under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The Home Secretary, at the request of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, will also be allowed to vary the time allowed for urgent warrants to be…
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: Long Read
The Privacy International Network is celebrating Data Privacy Week, where we’ll be talking about how trends in surveillance and data exploitation are increasingly affecting our right to privacy. Join the conversation on Twitter using #dataprivacyweek.
In the era of smart cities, the gap between the internet and the so-called physical world is closing. Gone are the days, when the internet was limited to your activities behind a desktop screen, when nobody knew you were a dog.
Today, the…
Content type: News & Analysis
In order to uphold the law and keep us safe, the police can seriously interfere with a range of fundamental human rights. And so transparency and public scrutiny of their actions are essential to protect against misconduct and abuse.
So why is the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) now permitted to operate in secret?
We all have the right to seek information from most public bodies – including the police – under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000. When the law was first…
Content type: Advocacy
A new Privacy International report based on an international collaborative investigation carried out by 40 NGOs in 42 countries has found alarming weaknesses in the oversight arrangements that are supposed to govern the sharing of intelligence between state intelligence agencies, including in the UK. Privacy International urges governments to enact urgent reforms and improve public understanding about the scope of intelligence sharing and the safeguards and oversight currently in place.
Content type: Press release
The Case
Privacy International v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs et al. (Bulk Personal Datasets & Bulk Communications Data challenge)
Date: 5-9 June 2017
Time: from 10:00 onwards
Location: Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand, London WC2A 2LL United Kingdom
Hearing overview
Next week’s hearing follows the Investigatory Powers Tribunal’s earlier judgment in October 2016, which ruled that three issues are to be determined:
…
Content type: News & Analysis
The recent announcement by the Minister for Justice that serious and organised crime will receive legislative attention from the Government and the Oireachtas is most welcome. However, the stated means of achieving this are deeply concerning for the Irish public and larger digital economy. The statements indicate that the Government intends to follow the British model of surveillance where Irish companies can be compelled to betray their users. Why would any user engage with a…
Content type: Advocacy
The powers set out in the Investigatory Powers Act are wide ranging, opaque and lacking in adequate safeguards. The Government have now published updated Draft Codes of Practice for certain parts of the Act. Unfortunately, the Codes do little to solve the Act’s problems. Instead, they add little transparency, occasionally expand powers, and undermine some of the limited safeguards in the Investigatory Powers Act. These Codes demand close scrutiny. The unusually short timeframe for…
Content type: News & Analysis
The elections in our midst here, there, and everywhere are increasingly resulting in governments who introduce policies that result in leaps backwards for dignity, equality, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Whether it is Poland or the Philippines, governments are overriding essential safeguards.
This week Britain’s proposed surveillance legislation took another step toward normalising mass surveillance. The United States of America has long promoted mass surveillance and maintains its…
Content type: Report
This report sheds light on the current state of affairs in data retention regulation across the EU post the Tele-2/Watson judgment. Privacy International has consulted with digital rights NGOs and industry from across the European Union to survey 21 national jurisdictions (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom).…
Content type: Press release
Please find attached a copy of the briefing along with promotional photographs with the briefing.
Privacy International has today sent top EU and UK Brexit negotiators* a briefing on their vulnerability to potential surveillance by each other, and others. Brexit negotiations are to begin today.
The global privacy rights NGO has highlighted to the negotiators the risk of sophisticated surveillance capabilities being deployed against each other and by others, and provided…
Content type: News & Analysis
Brexit and Privacy
It's as clear as mud, what it means when a country decides to willingly pull out of a trading bloc, a policy coordination mechanism, a relatively democratic network, and a framework for the free flow of people, data, and rights. Meanwhile today the minister in charge of surveillance for the past six years will assume the leadership of the country.
There is much speculation as to what is next. Here's our take. Importantly, there's a lot to be worried about, some to like…
Content type: News & Analysis
This piece was written by PI Research Officer Edin Omanovic and originally appeared here.
Whatever happens over the next few years, if there is to be a storm, then it is best to prepare. It is essential that western liberal democratic societies are resilient enough to uphold their fundamental values.
One of the UK’s biggest security assets is one of its biggest security threats. The UK’s spies have access to and are allowed to exercise some of the most sophisticated electronic…
Content type: Press release
For further information please contact PI Legal Officer Millie Graham Wood: [email protected]
For media enquiries please contact [email protected]
Documents obtained by Privacy International reveal the existence of a secret oversight function given to the Intelligence Services Commissioner (ISC), in operation since at least 2014. The details of this function, referred to as the ‘third direction’, remain redacted and only came to light following…
Content type: Long Read
This piece was written by Ashley Gorski, who is an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, and PI legal officer Scarlet Kim and originally appeared in The Guardian here.
In recent weeks, the Hollywood film about Edward Snowden and the movement to pardon the NSA whistleblower have renewed worldwide attention on the scope and substance of government surveillance programs. In the United States, however, the debate has often been a narrow one, focused on the…
Content type: Long Read
This week, Privacy International, together with nine other international human rights NGOs, filed submissions with the European Court of Human Rights. Our case challenges the UK government’s bulk interception of internet traffic transiting fiber optic cables landing in the UK and its access to information similarly intercepted in bulk by the US government, which were revealed by the Snowden disclosures. To accompany our filing, we have produced two infographics to illustrate the…
Content type: Press release
Today, Privacy International, together with five internet and communications providers from around the world, have lodged an application before the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the British Government's use of bulk hacking abroad. Until we brought our original case at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in 2014, the Government had never admitted that it engaged in hacking. Now we are learning for the first time how far-reaching the Government's global hacking capabilities are…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International is today proud to release the Surveillance Industry Index (SII), the world's largest publicly available educational resource of data and documents of its kind on the surveillance industry, and an accompanying report charting the growth of the industry and its current reach.
The SII, which is based on data collected by journalists, activists, and researchers across the world is the product of months of collaboration between Transparency Toolkit and Privacy…
Content type: Long Read
Privacy International’s case on Bulk Personal Datasets and Bulk Communications Data comes to a head with a four-day hearing in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal which commenced on 26 July 2016.
The litigation has brought to light significant revelations about the use of section 94 of the 1984 Telecommunications Act to obtain bulk communications data.
Large amounts of disclosure have shed new light on this hitherto secret power and explained confusing aspects of the Government’s Response to…
Content type: Press release
Privacy International General Counsel Caroline Wilson Palow said
"Today's opinion issued by the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is a serious blow to the UK's Investigatory Powers Bill (IPBill). It, hopefully, presages a strong judgment from the Court itself.
The bulk powers - what we would call mass surveillance powers - embedded throughout the IPBill go far beyond tackling serious crime. They would give a range of public bodies, not just the Police and…
Content type: Press release
A new Twitter Bot, launched today by the global privacy rights organisation Privacy International, ‘reveals’ the internet browsing history of leading politicians, as well as details of their telephone, text message, WhatsApp, and even Snapchat communications. @GCHQbot has been launched to raise the profile of the sensitivity of our internet browsing history and communications data, on the day that the Investigatory Powers Bill begins its Committee Stage in the House of Lords.
Bot: …
Content type: Press release
Today Sir Stanley Burnton, the Interception of Communications Commissioner, published a highly critical review of the use of Section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 for gathering vast amounts of our communications data in bulk. This obscure clause pre-dates the internet era, but has been used for nearly two decades for mass surveillance. Today is the first time that these powers have been criticised by an independent statutory body. IOCCO is critical of the Government's use of these…