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Content type: News & Analysis
With the launch of the "Eyes Wide Open" project, Privacy International has put together a fact sheet about the secretive Five Eyes alliance. Consider this a guide to the secret surveillance alliance that has infiltrated every aspect of the modern global communications system.
Beginning in 1946, an alliance of five English-speaking countries (the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) developed a series of bilateral agreements over more than a decade that became known as the UKUSA…
Content type: News & Analysis
For nearly 30 years, the UK's wiretapping laws have been the subject of annual reports. Since 2002, they are available around the web (for now), but earlier than that, it is a rabbit warren of possible locations.
In practice, the reports are solely available from the Parliamentary Archives if and only if you are a member of an institution which has paid for access. Requesting a copy from elsewhere sends you to this destination.
The current Interception of Communications Commissioner didn't…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International is pleased to announce the Surveillance Industry Index, the most comprehensive publicly available database on the private surveillance sector.
Over the last four years, Privacy International has been gathering information from various sources that details how the sector sells its technologies, what the technologies are capable of and in some cases, which governments a technology has been sold to. Through our collection of materials and brochures at surveillance trade…
Content type: News & Analysis
It was only a year ago when the UK Home Office repeatedly made statements about how their capability to collect intelligence was degrading, and how new laws such as the Communications Data Bill were necessary to protect citizens.
In hindsight, given the revelations about the UK domestic mass surveillance programs, these once desperate cries for more crime- and terrorism-fighting tools now look like nothing more than attempts to illegitimately spy more on all citizens. Quotes from those debates…
Content type: News & Analysis
The social news website MiroirSocial.com confirmed yesterday that the prominent French technology firm Bull SA has sold its controversial mass surveillance "Eagle" system to Stéphane Salies, one of its chief designers and an ex-director of Bull. The surveillance software was previously manufactured and supplied by Bull’s subsidiary, Amesys, a company that is currently the subject of a judicial enquiry in Paris following a legal complaint filed by two human rights organisations, the…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International is writing this Open Letter to Members of both Chambers of the Netherlands Parliament to express our deep concern over Justice Minister Donner's proposed 'Wet op de uitgebreide identificatieplicht'. We believe these requirements will violate the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
By way of introduction, Privacy International (PI) is a human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance by governments and…
Content type: News & Analysis
The French Socialist Party suffered a resounding defeat in parlimentary elections on March 21st and 28th, in part due to a wiretapping scandal that broke a week before the elections. Results showed that they lost over 200 seats in the Parliment and became the minority party. Socialist President Francois Mitterrand will remain in office but is expected to face a tough election in 1994.
The scandal emerged after reports and transcripts were leaked to Paris Daily Liberation, showing that a…
Content type: Report
This report presents a detailed analysis of the international trade in surveillance technology. Its’ primary concern is the ow of sophisticated computer-based technology from developed countries to developing countries – and particularly to non-democratic regimes. It is in this environment where surveillance technologies become technologies of political control.
Surveillance technologies can be de ned as technologies which can monitor, track and assess the movements, activities and…