Search
Content type: Advocacy
15th June 2022
Despite repeated recommendations by the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly to review, amend or enact national laws to ensure respect and protection of the right to privacy, national laws are often inadequate and do not regulate, limit or prohibit surveillance powers of government agencies as well as data exploitative practices of companies.
Even when laws are in place, they are seldom enforced. In fact PI notes how it is often only following legal challenges in national or…
Content type: News & Analysis
1st April 2022
The UK government has acknowledged that section 8(4) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (“RIPA”) (which has since been repealed) violated Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In relation to Article 10, it specifically acknowledged that the way in which security agencies handled confidential journalistic material violated fundamental rights protected by Article 10.
As part of a friendly settlement with two applicants, the UK government acknowledged…
Content type: News & Analysis
18th March 2022
In the midst of the atrocious war currently being waged by Russia on Ukraine, on 14 March 2022 Reuters reported that Clearview AI, the infamous online surveillance company, had offered its services to the Ukrainian defense ministry. A day later in an interview for TechCrunch, Ukraine's vice prime minister and minister for Digital Transformation confirmed that the partnership with Clearview AI was "currently in very early development".
Clearview is an online surveillance company that collects…
Content type: Report
31st January 2022
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 third edition of the Guide. It has been updated it to reflect the most relevant legal developments until December 2021.
Despite its name, the Guide isn’t just aimed at lawyers. It aspires to be a handy reference tool for anyone engaging in campaigning, advocacy, and…
Content type: Explainer
15th December 2021
Following sustained reporting by researchers, journalists and activists around the world, including recent disclosures exposed by the PegasusProject, the surveillance industry is facing scrutiny like never before.
In the latest move, eighteen U.S. lawmakers have today demanded that the U.S. government imposes sanctions on four non-US surveillance companies for, as they mention in their letter, facilitating “disappearance, torture and murder of human rights activists and journalists”.
The move…
Content type: Long Read
18th November 2021
Zimbabwe has a history of state led surveillance that is carried out more for political gain than for the investigation of legitimate criminal activities. During former President Mugabe’s 37 year rule the government used laws and state security structures to carry out targeted surveillance of persons of political interest and more generalised mass surveillance of the population.
Specific laws such as the Interception of Communications Act as well as mandatory SIM-card registration regulations…
Content type: Examples
29th October 2021
The 20 years since the 9/11 attacks have fundamentally changed the way the New York Police Department operates, leading it to use facial recognition software, licence plate readers, and mobile X-ray vans, among other surveillance tools for both detecting and blocking potential terrorist attacks and solving minor crimes. Surveillance drones monitor mass protests, antiterrorism officers interrogate protesters, and the NYPD’s Intelligence Division uses antiterror tactics against gang violence and…
Content type: Examples
29th October 2021
The Myanmar military are stopping people in the street, checking through the data on their phones, and taking them to jail if they find suspicious messages or photos. At least 5,100 people were still in jail many months after opposing the February 1, 2021 military takeover. The spontaneous searches also deter individuals from continuing to post on social media or lead them to create new accounts they hope will evade detection, and avoid crowded streets where police or soldiers are likely to be…
Content type: News & Analysis
7th October 2021
Introduction
The European Parliament has adopted a nonbinding resolution against the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by law enforcement in public spaces and a ban on facial recognition databases, such as the ones used by Clearview AI.
It is a significant and hugely welcome step in an ongoing campaign to ensure the EU leads the world in protecting against dangerous applications of AI within its borders.
The Resolution recognises the need to safeguard against application of AI and mass…
Content type: News & Analysis
19th August 2021
After almost 20 years of presence of the Allied Forces in Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement in February 2020 on the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. A few weeks before the final US troops were due to leave Afghanistan, the Taliban had already taken control of various main cities. They took over the capital, Kabul, on 15 August 2021, and on the same day the President of Afghanistan left the country.
As seen before with regime…
Content type: News & Analysis
27th July 2021
As Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories continue to publish crucial information about the potential targets of NSO Group’s spyware, we know this much already: something needs to be done.
But what exactly needs to be done is less obvious. Even though this is not the first time that the world has learned about major abuses by the surveillance industry (indeed, it’s not even the first time this month), it’s difficult to know what needs to change.
So how can the proliferation and use of…
Content type: Long Read
23rd July 2021
Case: Privacy International v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and others
Last update: July 2021
Summary
The UK Security and Intelligence Agencies (SIAs) – including Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Security Service and Secret Intelligence Service – have been building massive comprehensive datasets of information on each and every individual. They have been collecting and combining information from multiple sources on unclear legal bases and with minimal…
Content type: News & Analysis
23rd July 2021
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 can find…
Content type: Advocacy
20th July 2021
En mai 2021, nous avons fait une soumission pour la 132ème session du Comité des droits de l’homme qui a eu lieu entre le 28 juin 2021 et le 23 juillet 2021 en relation avec la conformité de la France avec le Pacte international relatif aux droits civils et politiques (PIDCP) avant l’adoption de la liste de points à traiter avant présentation de rapports (LoIPR).
Nous avons appelé le Comité des droits de l’homme de l’ONU à inclure dans la liste des questions au gouvernement français les points…
Content type: Advocacy
20th July 2021
On May 2021, we made a submission for the 132nd Session of the Human Rights Committee that took place between 28 June 2021 and 23 July 2021 in relation to France’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) before the adoption of the List of issues prior to reporting (LoIPR).
We called the UN Human Rights Committee to include in the list of issues to the French government the following:
Emergency measures taken in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and…
Content type: Examples
17th June 2021
While traditional media sought to criminalize the widespread November 2020 protests in Peru following the Congressional ouster of President Vizcarra, witnesses disseminated videos and photographs of police abuse on social networks. In the fear and uncertainty, many myths also circulated. In Peru, citizens have the right to refuse to allow police to check their cellphones unless they have a court order; slowed or absent wireless connections may simply be due to overload; as public officials,…
Content type: Examples
17th June 2021
In December 2020 Myanmar authorities began rolling out its $1.2 million "Safe City" system of 335 Huawei AI-equipped surveillance cameras in eight townships in the capital, Naypyidaw. The system, whose purpose was originally presented by the Myanmar government as fighting crime, automatically scans faces and vehicle licence plates in public places and alerts authorities to the presence of those on a wanted list. The Safe City plan calls for installing similar systems in Mandalay by mid-2021 and…
Content type: Examples
17th June 2021
In 2019, interviews with Hong Kong protesters destroying smart lampposts revealed that many distrusted the government's claim that they would only take air quality measurements and help with traffic control, largely because of the comprehensive surveillance net the Chinese government was using to control and oppress the minority Uighur population in the Xinjiang region. As part of their response to this threat, the protesters wore masks, carried umbrellas, and travelled on foot, using online…
Content type: Examples
17th June 2021
In 2019 Hong Kong protesters cut down 20 of the city's smart lampposts, which are streetlights equipped with sensors and cameras, in order to counter the threat that they were vectors for surveillance technologies such as facial and licence plate recognition. TickTack Technology, which provided the lampposts, terminated its contract with the Hong Kong government because of the property damage and threats to its employees. Protesters uploaded pictures of the lampposts' inner workings to Facebook…
Content type: Examples
17th June 2021
During 2019, Hong Kong law enforcement authorities had access to AI facial recognition software provided by Sydney-based iOmniscient that can match faces and licence plates from video footage to police databases, but chief executive Carrie Lam's administration and police did not confirm whether they were using it to quash the pro-democracy protests. IOmniscient is also used to find lost children and manage traffic and has users in more than 50 countries. Under Hong Kong's privacy laws, members…
Content type: Examples
17th June 2021
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
14th June 2021
On November 9, 2020, after a year of escalating tensions, Peruvian president Martín Vizcarra was impeached on the grounds of "moral incapacity" by lawmakers threatened by his anti-corruption investigations and the policy reform he led. The street protests that followed all over the country were coordinated via Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, and TikTok (#MerinoNoMeRepresenta) by hundreds of newly-created small, decentralised organisations. The march on November 14 is thought to be the largest in…
Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
US Customs and Border Protection Data show that the Department of Homeland Security deployed helicopters, airplanes, and drones over 15 cities, including New York City, Buffalo, Dayton OH, and Philadelphia, where demonstrators assembled to protest the killing of George Floyd and collected at least 270 hours of video surveillance footage. That deployment, which sparked a congressional inquiry, was only part of a nationwide operation that repurposed resources usually sent to the US border to find…
Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
According to records obtained under a freedom of information request, the San Francisco Police Department used the camera network belonging to downtown Union Square Improvement District to spy on protesters during the end of May and early June 2020. The high-definition cameras, manufactured by Motorola brand Avigilon, can zoom in on a person's face and are linked to a software analysis system. Motorola is expanding its tool lineup to make it easier for police to gain access to private cameras…
Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
Over 2020, EFF supported the right to protest without being surveilled by bringing lawsuits, offering protesters legal support, teaching protesters surveillance self-defence, and providing tools for people on the ground to use to determine what equipment their local police departments are using to spy on activists. Via public records requests, EFF discovered that the San Francisco Police Department gained access to over 400 cameras belonging to the Union Square Business Improvement District to…
Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
When Dallas police posted on Twitter asking for videos of the protests taking place after George Floyd's killing, a flood of videos and images of K-pop stars were uploaded to its anonymous iWatch Dallas tip-off app. Law enforcement can call on vast numbers of networked cameras - from cars, food and retail chains that are typically willing to share with police, law enforcement agencies' own networks of surveillance and body cameras as well as object and face recognition software, protesters and…
Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
Despite having promised in 2016 not to facilitate domestic surveillance, the AI startup Dataminr used its firehose access to Twitter to alert law enforcement to social media posts with the latest whereabouts and actions of demonstrators involved in the protests following the killing of George Floyd. Dataminr's investors include the CIA and, previously, Twitter itself. Twitter's terms of service ban software developers from tracking or monitoring protest events. Some alerts were sourced from…
Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
New data emerged in January 2021 to show that the National Guard deployment of more than 43,350 troops during the nationwide demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd was far more extensive than had been realised, and far greater than the 6,200 troops deployed at the Capitol during the forewarned insurrection. At least 20 military surveillance and reconnaissance helicopters flew over protests in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Washington DC, raising concerns about the data…
Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
Hundreds of emails and documents obtained in response to a freedom of information request by BuzzFeed News show that US federal agents monitored social media for information on planned Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Minneapolis, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and other cities. Researchers and activists (such as EFF) warned that technology-driven surveillance of protesters could set a dangerous precedent and chill assembly and speech, particularly in the case of Black Lives Matter. The…
Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
Human rights activists and Democratic members of the US Congress wrote to top law enforcement officials in the Trump administration to demand they cease surveilling Americans engaging in peaceful protests. Trump and others in his administration called those protesting the killing of George Floyd "domestic terrorists" and "anarchists". Recent efforts to surveil Americans have included facial recognition, automated licence plate readers, and Stingrays, as well as spy planes and drones.
https://…