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Content type: Long Read
18th December is International Migrants Day, a day to recognize both the contributions and continued struggles of migrants across the world.Migrants continue to face an increased level of human rights violations through hostile immigration policies and practices. At borders and beyond, their fundamental human rights and dignity are being violated through old and new technologies. These systems in place reinforce the dehumanising rhetoric of migrants, who are merely seeking asylum and a better…
Content type: News & Analysis
On 15 May 2024, a London Administrative Court handed down its judgment in the case of ADL & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department, just two months after another court judgment and a ruling of the UK's data protection authority (ICO). The four Claimants in this latest case (including asylum seekers and survivors of trafficking) were challenging the UK Home Office's policy of placing people released from immigration detention under 24/7 GPS surveillance - either by shackling them…
Content type: Long Read
18th December is International Migrants Day. It’s a day designated by the United Nations, dedicated to recognising the “important contribution of migrants while highlighting the challenges they face.”On this day we wish to recognise in particular the countless human rights violations that people experience at borders and within hostile immigration systems. We thank those who survive these violations for sharing with us and others their experiences of such violations, and for accepting to…
Content type: Press release
The decision by the EU’s oversight body follows a year-long inquiry prompted by complaints outlining how EU bodies and agencies are cooperating with governments around the world to increase their surveillance powers filed by Privacy International, Access Now, the Border Violence Monitoring Network, Homo Digitalis, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and Sea-Watch.
The complainants welcome the decision by the European Ombudsman and call on the Commission to urgently review its…
Content type: Long Read
Since early 2021, PI have been investigating and challenging the latest stride in the UK’s cruel migration policies: the roll-out of GPS ankle tags to monitor migrants released on immigration bail, a dehumanising, invasive method of control that monitors and records people’s precise location 24/7.
More recently, we found out through Freedom of Information Requests that the Home Office is working to roll out "smartwatches" - devices that also record 24/7 location data, but instead of being…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International (PI) has today filed complaints with the Information Commissioner (ICO) and Forensic Science Regulator (FSR) against the UK Home Office's use of GPS ankle tags to monitor migrants released on immigration bail. This policy and practice represents a seismic change in the surveillance of migrants in the UK. PI was first alerted to this scheme by organisations such as Bail for Immigration Detainees, an independent charity that exists to challenge immigration detention in the…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International (PI) welcomes the call of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants to assess the human rights impact of current and newly established border management measures with the aim of identifying effective ways to prevent human rights violations at international borders, both on land and at sea.
The issues highlighted in the call for submissions are ones that PI has been investigating, reporting and monitoring as part of our campaigns demanding a human rights…
Content type: Video
Links
Josoor International Solidarity’s website is at https://www.josoor.net
No Name Kitchen’s website https://www.nonamekitchen.org
Border Violence Monitoring Network’s Website is at https://www.borderviolence.eu
Their reports documenting violence and trends in Greece and the Balkans route are at https://www.borderviolence.eu/category/monthly-report/
Lighthouse Report’s investigations on pushbacks in the Aegean are available at https://www.lighthousereports.nl/investigation/…
Content type: News & Analysis
2022 will see a raft of high tech surveillance tools emerging in the UK government’s arsenal, which will further entrench a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants. Compounding this further, immigration officers will increasingly be using digital forensic tools such as 'mobile phone extraction' under a veil of secrecy. This raises serious concerns about overreach, misuse and abuse of power, the actual quality and integrity of the data they gather, and independent oversight of these powers. But it…
Content type: Explainer
An array of digital technologies are being deployed in the context of border enforcement. Satellite and aerial surveillance are part of the surveillance toolkit and yet, they are also used by organisations seeking to hold government actions to account and improve efficacy of their own work. To effectively critique state use and delve into potential benefits of satellite and aerial surveillance, we must first understand it.
In this explainer we dig into a technology which many are aware of for…
Content type: Report
Privacy International has released a report summarising the result of its research into the databases and surveillance tools used by authorities across the UK’s borders, immigration, and citizenship system.
The report uses procurement, contractual, and other open-source data and aims to inform the work of civil society organisations and increase understanding of a vast yet highly opaque system upon which millions of people rely.
It also describes and maps…
Content type: News & Analysis
A new report by the UN Working Group on mercenaries analyses the impact of the use of private military and security services in immigration and border management on the rights of migrants, and highlights the responsibilities of private actors in human rights abuses as well as lack of oversight and, ultimately, of accountability of the system.
Governments worldwide have prioritised an approach to immigration that criminalises the act of migration and focuses on security.
Today, borders are not…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the last few weeks, the UK government has announced various new measures to ensure that crossings across the Channel were “inviable” including by appointing a new role of “clandestine Channel threat commander" and further plans to deploy the navy to stop migrants from crossing to the UK from France across the Channel. Premature plans it seems, as not only would such measures be contrary to the UK’s international obligations to allow individuals to seek asylum in the UK, but also since such…
Content type: Explainer
In the name of reinforcing migration control and increasing security, the EU is introducing a host of new surveillance measures aimed at short-term visitors to the Schengen area. New tools and technologies being introduced as part of the visa application process and the incoming “travel authorisation” requirement include automated profiling systems, a ‘pre-crime’ watchlist, and the automated cross-checking of numerous national, European and international databases. There are significant risks…
Content type: Long Read
Over the last two decades we have seen an array of digital technologies being deployed in the context of border controls and immigration enforcement, with surveillance practices and data-driven immigration policies routinely leading to discriminatory treatment of people and undermining peoples’ dignity.
And yet this is happening with little public scrutiny, often in a regulatory or legal void and without understanding and consideration to the impact on migrant communities at the border and…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International (PI), Fundaciòn Datos Protegidos, Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D) and Statewatch responded to the call for submission of the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance on how digital technologies deployed in the context of border enforcement and administration reproduce, reinforce, and compound racial discrimination.
This submission provides information on specific digital technologies in service of border…
Content type: Long Read
There are few places in the world where an individual is as vulnerable as at the border of a foreign country.
As migration continues to be high on the social and political agenda, Western countries are increasingly adopting an approach that criminalises people at the border. Asylum seekers are often targeted with intrusive surveillance technologies and afforded only limited rights (including in relation to data protection), often having the effect of being treated as “guilty until proven…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International responded to the call for submissions of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the rights of peoples to self-determination on role of private military and security companies in immigration and border management and the impact on the protection of the rights of all migrants.
This submission builds on PI’s research and reporting highlighting examples of the involvement of private companies in…
Content type: News & Analysis
Amid calls from international organisations and civil society urging for measures to protect the migrant populations in Greece and elsewhere, last week, the European Commission submitted a draft proposal to amend the general budget 2020 in order to, among other measures, provide assistance to Greece in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Both at the Turkish-Greek border and in the camps on the Greek islands, there are severe concerns not only about the dire situation in which these people…
Content type: Advocacy
The letter has been signed by more than 40 organisations and it is open for individuals to sign.
At the moment, the Department of Health and Social Care has given no assurance that NHS data will not be shared with the Home Office and used for immigration enforcement, including for those people with a confirmed coronavirus diagnosis.
Assurances which were confirmed by the Irish government as part of their response to COVID-19: last week, during a Parliamentary debate, Irish Minister of Health…
Content type: Long Read
It was a quiet evening in Agadez, a bustling Saharan city in the centre of Niger. Thirty-five year old Agali Ahmed was sipping tea at a friend’s place, as he often did, when he received a message: police were at his uncle’s house. When he got there, Ahmed saw men in plainclothes, standing around the building’s gate. Inside, more men were searching the apartment. Three white men, who Ahmed guessed were Spanish, asked for his phone and started taking pictures of him. They told him to follow them…
Content type: Long Read
The European Union (EU) spends billions on research and development aimed at driving economic growth and jobs, as well as furthering the bloc’s broader agenda. Within the current budget, known as Horizon 2020 and covering the years 2014-2020, some €80 billion has been made available for research in a huge number of areas, ranging from finding cures for diseases to helping keep the earth viable for life.
From the same budget, it also funds a lot of projects aimed at developing surveillance…
Content type: Advocacy
As any data protection lawyer and privacy activist will attest, there’s nothing like a well-designed and enforced data protection law to keep the totalitarian tendencies of modern Big Brother in check.
While the EU’s data protection rules aren’t perfect, they at least provide some limits over how far EU bodies, governments and corporations can go when they decide to spy on people.
This is something the bloc’s border control agency, Frontex, learned recently after coming up with a plan to…
Content type: News & Analysis
Photo: The European Union
“Border Externalisation”, the transfer of border controls to foreign countries, has in the last few years become the main instrument through which the European Union seeks to stop migratory flows to Europe. Similar to the strategy being implemented under Trump’s administration, it relies on utilising modern technology, training, and equipping authorities in third countries to export the border far beyond its shores.
It is enabled by the adoption…
Content type: Examples
In December 2018, Florida citizen Peter Sean Brown filed a federal lawsuit against the Monroe County Sheriff's offices for arresting and detaining him for three weeks claiming he was an illegal alien from Jamaica. Even though Brown offered to show the sheriff his birth certificate and explained he had been wrongfully detained 20 years before and the jail's own records listed his birthplace as Philadelphia, PA, the sheriff relied on a form sent by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Brown…
Content type: Examples
In December 2018, in the wake of the Windrush scandal, the National Police Council, which represents police chiefs across England and Wales agreed to cease passing on to deportation authorities information about people suspected of being in the country illegally. The measures also ban officers from checking the police national computer solely to check on immigration status. Police said they believed that their too-close relationship with immigration authorities in aid of the government's "…
Content type: Examples
In a report released in December 2018, the UK's National Audit Office examined the management of information and immigrant casework at the Home Office that led to the refusal of services, detention, and removal of Commonwealth citizens who came to the UK and were granted indefinite leave to remain between 1948 and 1973, the so-called "Windrush generation" but never given documentation to prove their status. The NAO concludes that the Home Office failed to adequately consider its duty of care in…
Content type: Examples
In November 2018 reports emerged that immigrants heading north from Central America to the US border are more and more often ensuring they are accompanied by children because "family units" are known to be less likely to be deported, at least temporarily, and smugglers charge less than half as much when a minor is in the group because their risk is less. Some parents have given their children - sometimes for cash - to other adults such as a relative, godparent, or, sometimes, unrelated person.…
Content type: News & Analysis
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency at the centre of carrying out President Trump’s “zero tolerance” approach to immigration enforcement and family separation, has for years been contracting a US surveillance company to intercept peoples’ communications across the United States.
The wide potential scope for the use of the powers raises concerns about their use for the real-time surveillance of people, families, and communities caught up in Trump’s immigration…
Content type: News & Analysis
According to the International Organization for Migration, an estimated 258 million people are international migrants – that is, someone who changes their country of usual residence, That’s one in every 30 people on earth.
These unprecedented movements levels show no sign of slowing down. It is predicted that by 2050, there will be 450 million migrants across the world.
Nowadays, it is politically acceptable to demonise migrants, and countless leaders have spewed divisive and xenophobic…