Search
Content type: Press release
1st December 2013
Privacy International today has filed a complaint with the Australian Inspector-General of Intelligence Security, calling for an immediate investigation into deeply troubling reports that the Australian intelligence services offered to violate the privacy rights of millions of citizens by handing over bulk metadata to its Five Eye partners.
According to the leaked Five Eyes memo published in the Guardian on 2 December, the Australian Signals Directorate, during a meeting with the secretive…
Content type: News & Analysis
28th November 2013
The following is an excerpt from a Comment originally publihsed by The Guardian, written by Privacy International's Head of Research, Eric King:
As the global public reels from yet another Snowden revelation – this time, that the US and UK intelligence forces have hacked into and planted spyware on more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide – the hypocrisy of the US and British governments is brought into sharp relief. Less than four years ago Hillary Clinton, chastising China, declared that…
Content type: News & Analysis
28th November 2013
We, and other privacy advocates, havecriticised the poor provisions of the so-called Safe Harbour agreement, which allows free transfers of personal information from European countries to companies in the United States that have signed up and promise to abide by its Principles. Now the European Commission, prompted by the recent mass surveillance scandals, has published an investigation into this agreement which provides overwhelming evidence that it is not fit for purpose. It urges the US…
Content type: Press release
21st November 2013
The United Nations General Assembly should approve a new resolution and make clear that indiscriminate surveillance is never consistent with the right to privacy, five human rights organizations said in a November 21, 2013 letter to members of the United Nations General Assembly.
After heated negotiations, the draft resolution on digital privacy initiated by Brazil and Germany emerged on November 21 relatively undamaged, despite efforts by the United States and other members of the “Five Eyes…
Content type: News & Analysis
14th October 2013
It was a strangely quiet summer. Beyond the Guardian's reporting of the Edward Snowden leaks and an appearance of William Hague before Parliament, there has been little uproar from the establishment about the extensive surveillance regime operated by the NSA and GCHQ.
No more greater has the silence been felt than from Whitehall, where MPs and government agencies remained tightlipped on the whole affair. This despite the fact that the revelations detailed the UK government's role in mass…
Content type: Long Read
21st July 2013
Britain's spy agency, GCHQ, is secretly conducting mass surveillance by tapping fibre optic cables, giving it access to huge amounts of data on both innocent citizens and targeted suspects, according to a report in the Guardian.
Mass, indiscriminate surveillance of this kind goes against an individual's fundamental human right to privacy. The scope and scale of this program, which monitors the entire British public and much of the world, is neither necessary nor proportionate and thus,…
Content type: News & Analysis
6th June 2013
The revelations of the US government's massive and indiscriminate surveillance program are absolutely frightening, putting before the public's eyes the breadth of a secret, dragnet spying regime which casts every US citizen as a suspect.
The unearthing of this top secret court order shows that even in a country that prides itself on checks and balances, and is governed by the rule of law, that government and law enforcement agencies operate within a murky legal framework hidden from public…