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Content type: Report
First published in 2017, PI’s Guide to International Law and Surveillance is an attempt to collate relevant excerpts from these judgments and reports into a single principled guide that will be regularly updated. This is the fourth edition of the Guide. It has been updated it to reflect the most relevant legal developments until March 2024.The Guide aspires to be a handy reference tool for anyone engaging in campaigning, advocacy, and scholarly research, on these issues. The fourth…
Content type: Examples
Mexico is one of the biggest buyers of next-generation surveillance technology. And now data leaked to Forbes indicates it's taken an unprecedented step in becoming the first-known buyer of surveillance technology that silently spies on calls, text messages and locations of any mobile phone user, via a long-vulnerable portion of global telecoms networks known as Signalling System No. 7 (SS7).
The revelation was contained in what an anonymous source close claimed was…
Content type: Examples
In December 2017, it was revealed that the large telco Bharti Airtel made use of Aadhaar-linked eKYC (electronic Know Your Customer) to open bank accounts for their customers without their knowledge or consent. eKYC is a way of using data in the UIDAI database as part of the verification process, which Airtel made use of for the issuing of SIM cards, and also secretly opened bank accounts with their Airtel Payments Bank. More than 2 million accounts could have been opened, receiving more than…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International and Metamorphosis have today written to authorities in Macedonia to provide information and call for assurances regarding government surveillance in Macedonia.
For over two years, Macedonia has endured a prolonged and severe political crisis - including wide scale protests and acts of violence against parliamentarians - following reports that the governing party had been unlawfully intercepting the phone calls of some 20,000 people, including, activists, journalists…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International and Metamorphosis have today written to authorities in Macedonia to provide information and call for assurances regarding government surveillance in Macedonia.
For over two years, Macedonia has endured a prolonged and severe political crisis - including wide scale protests and acts of violence against parliamentarians - following reports that the governing party had been unlawfully intercepting the phone calls of some 20,000 people, including,…
Content type: News & Analysis
On a hot day in Nairobi, our researcher is speaking to an officer of Kenya’s National Intelligence Service (NIS). The afternoon is wearing on and the conversation has turned to the presidential elections, taking place in August this year. He has just finished describing the NIS’ highly secret surveillance powers and the disturbing ways in which these powers are deployed.
“It is what you might call ‘acceptable deaths,’” he states about the misuse of communications surveillance powers. “People…
Content type: News & Analysis
Macedonia's capital Skopje is bracing itself for another night of protests and clashes after the interim President announced on Tuesday that there will be an amnesty for everyone under investigation in a formal probe into illegal wiretapping.
The investigation into the wiretapping scandal, which was the focus of Privacy International's report released last month, Macedonia: Society on Tap, also focused on other serious crimes, including electoral fraud, blackmail and the torture of a…
Content type: Long Read
“This is my personal opinion,” concedes Branko, a taxi driver in Skopje, the Republic of Macedonia's capital. “It was done by America to stop Putin building his gas pipe line through Macedonia.”
“This is just politics,” he advises, skeptically.
It's a common reaction to the wiretapping scandal in Macedonia. Beginning in February last year when opposition leader Zoran Zaev posted a series of wiretaps online that he called 'bombs' – they seemingly showed that for years the phone calls of some…
Content type: News & Analysis
This is a guest post by Jasna Koteska. Read Privacy International's full report documenting stories of mass surveillance in Macedonia here.
What are the main similarities and differences between modern surveillance methods in Macedonia and those of the socialist period?
In all 46 years of communist Macedonia, the total official number of personal communist surveillance files is 14,572. Unofficial sources report more than 50,000 files. The number of direct 'snitches' in communist…
Content type: Press release
Privacy International today has filed formal complaints with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the UK against some of the world’s leading telecommunication companies, for providing assistance to British spy agency GCHQ in the mass interception of internet and telephone traffic passing through undersea fibre optic cables.
According to recent reports, BT, Verizon Enterprise, Vodafone Cable, Viatel, Level 3, and Interoute granted access to their fibre optic…
Content type: Press release
Transparency reports have traditionally played a critical role in informing the public on the lawful access requests made by governments to companies like Facebook. These reports have provided a useful accountability mechanism for users to know what governments are asking for and how often. Transparency reports also inform users as to what intermediaries are doing to protect their privacy when it comes to sharing data with governments. Given Facebook's ever-growing presence in the lives of…
Content type: Press release
In the wake of revelations that the UK Government is accessing wide-ranging intelligence information from the US and is conducting mass surveillance on citizens across the UK, Privacy International today commenced legal action against the Government, charging that the expansive spying regime is seemingly operated outside of the rule of law, lacks any accountability, and is neither necessary nor proportionate.
The claim, filed in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), challenges the UK…
Content type: Press release
The government today published a draft version of a bill that, if signed into law in its current form, would force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mobile phone network providers in Britain to install 'black boxes' in order to collect and store information on everyone's internet and phone activity, and give the police the ability to self-authorise access to this information. However, the Home Office failed to explain whether or not companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter will be…
Content type: Press release
An internal Liberal Democrat briefing on Home Office plans to massively expand government surveillance was today passed to Privacy International. The document contains significant evasions and distortions about the proposed 'Communications Capabilities Development Programme' (CCDP), and is clearly intended to persuade unconvinced Lib Dem MPs to vote in favour of the proposal.
The document contains a section entitled 'Remember, under Labour' consisting of a list of the previous government's…