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Content type: Long Read
On 25 May 2021, the European Court of Human Rights issued its judgment in Big Brother Watch & Others v. the UK. Below, we answer some of the main questions relating to the case.
After our initial reaction, below we answer some of the main questions relating to the case.
NOTE: This post reflects our initial reaction to the judgment and may be updated.
What’s the ruling all about?
In a nutshell, one of the world’s most important courts, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human…
Content type: News & Analysis
This piece originally appeared in Open Democracy here.
As the UK Parliament returns from its summer break, everyone’s back to talking about Brexit. But there’s another policy of existential significance to our democracy that we really need to be talking about. I refer here to the innocuously named ‘Investigatory Powers Bill’. The House of Lords have been debating the ‘bulk powers’ — what we would call the mass surveillance measures — of the Bill over the recent days. We are literally…
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
Key points
Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, and seven other human rights organizations challenge UK mass surveillance and UK access to US mass surveillance at the European Court of Human Rights
This is the first case before the European Court of Human Rights to directly challenge UK and US mass surveillance revealed by the Snowden disclosures
National courts and oversight bodies have failed to rein in mass surveillance practices that impact hundreds of millions of…
Content type: Long Read
Modern day government surveillance is based on the simple concept of “more is more” and “bigger is better”. More emails, more text messages, more phone calls, more screenshots from Skype calls. The bigger the haystack, the more needles we can find.
Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that this fundamental idea drives intelligence agencies like the NSA and GCHQ - the desire to collect it all, to generate gigantic haystacks through which to trawl. In the almost two years since the first of Snowden…
Content type: Press release
Privacy International, Reporters Without Borders, Digitale Gesellschaft, FIDH, and Human Rights Watch welcome news that the European Commission will move ahead and add specific forms of surveillance technology to the EU control list on dual use items, thus taking steps to finally hold companies to account who sell spy equipment and enable human rights abuses.
These important steps demonstrate that policymakers are beginning to wake up to the real harm that exists…
Content type: Press release
The ruling today from the European Court of Justice, invalidating the European Union’s 2006 Data Retention Directive policy, was strong and unequivocal: the right to privacy provides a fundamental barrier between the individual and powerful institutions, and laws allowing for indiscriminate, blanket retention on this scale are completely unacceptable.
As the Court states, it is not, and never was, proportionate to spy on the entire population of Europe. The types of data retained under this…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the same week that the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice labelled the retention of electronic communications data throughout Europe as a “serious interference with the right to privacy”, the French National Assembly has codified into law a suite of invasive and unrestrained surveillance powers, allowing an expanded range of government bodies invasive access to citizens electronic communications data and content and threatening the privacy rights of the French people.…
Content type: News & Analysis
At its last session on November 21st and 22nd 2006, the Article 29 Working Party has again been dealing with the SWIFT case and has unanimously adopted Opinion 128 on its findings in this case.
In this Opinion, the Article 29 Working Party emphasizes that even in the fight against terrorism and crime fundamental rights must remain guaranteed. The Article 29 Working Party insists therefore on the respect of global data protection principles.
SWIFT is a worldwide financial messaging service…
Content type: News & Analysis
Dear Mr Schrank,
I am writing with regard to the current controversy over the private arrangement between SWIFT and the U.S. Government that facilitates the extradition of confidential financial transaction data from SWIFT to U.S. authorities. You will be aware that Privacy International contends that this arrangement breaches privacy and data protection law, and we have lodged complaints with regulatory authorities in 38 countries.
In my many discussions with SWIFT officials over the past…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International has joined forces with dozens of other human rights and civil liberties organizations around the world to ask the European Parliament to reject a Directive that would seriously compromise personal freedom in the EU. Below is the text of the letter to Members of the European Parliament, and the pdf is also available.
To all Members of the European Parliament
We the undersigned are calling on you to reject the 'Directive of the European Parliament and the Council…
Content type: News & Analysis
The Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia made a call for submissions on whether the USA PATRIOT Act could allow the U.S. authorities to gain access to Canadians' personal information, enabled through the outsourcing of Canadian public services to the United States. The Commission also called for comments on the implications for compliance with Canadian provincial privacy laws, and to see if anything could be done to eliminate or mitigate the risks.
In this submission to the BC…