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Content type: News & Analysis
In an enormous breakthrough for those seeking transparency and accountability to the shadowy surveillance industry, the Swiss Government has been forced to publish the list of export licenses for surveillance technologies and other equipment, including details of their cost and destination.
The decision by the Federal Information and Data Protection Commissioner comes on the heels of consistent pressure from Privacy International, Swiss journalists, and several Members of Parliament on…
Content type: Press release
A 400 gigabyte trove of internal documents belonging to surveillance company Hacking Team has been released online. Hacking team sells intrusive hacking tools that have allegedly been used by some of the most repressive regimes in the world.
The documents reportedly confirm Hacking Team has customers in 35 countries, including some that routinely abuse human rights. These documents seemingly validate research conducted by Citizen Lab…
Content type: Press release
Privacy International's new report exposes the companies that have built the Colombian Government's controversial and highly invasive surveillance systems. The report “Demand/Supply: Exposing the Surveillance Industry in Colombia” shows the extensive dealings that companies from Israel, the UK, the USA, Finland, and New Zealand, among other countries, have had in supporting Colombian government agencies in purchasing surveillance equipment. Many of the company's customers were agencies that did…
Content type: Report
Over a dozen international companies are supplying powerful communications surveillance technology in Colombia. Privacy International examines the actors across the world involved in facilitating state surveillance.
The report is available in English and Spanish.
Content type: Report
For nearly two decades, the Colombian government has been expanding its capacity to spy on the private communications of its citizens. Privacy International's investigation reveals the state of Colombia's overlapping, unchecked systems of surveillance, including mass surveillance, that are vulnerable to abuse.
See the report in English and Spanish.
Content type: Advocacy
The Pakistani government has significantly expanded its communication interception activities. This Privacy International report covers the intelligence services plan to capture all IP-traffic in Pakistan and other initiatives, pointing to gaps in the laws governing surveillance.
Content type: News & Analysis
Here are eight things we have learned from this week's hack of some 400GB of internal company material and correspondence from Italian surveillance company Hacking Team.
The Citizen Lab was right
The Citizen Lab, who in 2014 identified some 21 countries that are potential customers of Hacking Team, were right about all of them. A 2015 report stated that there was likely to be more. In fact, at least 45 countries are purchasers of Hacking Team's…
Content type: News & Analysis
The Coalition Against Unlawful Surveillance Exports (CAUSE) has today released a new policy paper calling on the EU to take the opportunity to update its Dual Use Regulation to ensure that surveillance technologies are not exported from Europe and used for human rights violations.
The proposals have been developed by the international secretariat of CAUSE, a coalition of NGOs consisting of Access, Amnesty International, Digitale Gesellschaft, Human Rights Watch, the…
Content type: News & Analysis
The Swiss Federal Council has introduced a major amendment to its export licensing legislation in order to ensure surveillance technologies that might be used for human rights abuses are not exported from Switzerland.
What this means is that Swiss authorities must reject companies’ requests to export internet and mobile surveillance technologies if there “are reasonable grounds to believe” that the items could be used for repression in the country of destination.
The amendment…
Content type: News & Analysis
UPDATE (21st July 2015): The deadline for submissions was Monday 20 July, 2015. Privacy International has been working hard since the proposed rule was announced to analyse its potential effectiveness and any potential effects the proposed rule could have for security research.
UPDATE (12th June): The US Bureau of Industry and Security has published (http://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/policy-guidance/faqs#subcat200) a clarification of the scope of the proposed rule implementing…
Content type: News & Analysis
There is a common practice within the surveillance industry that makes the already murky market even harder to track: collaborating companies.
Within Privacy International's Surveillance Industry Index there are 83 documents detailing collaborations between companies involved in developing and selling surveillance technologies. These documents represent a variety of relationships – some are friendly companies, others advertise corporate partners, and some present themselves as a distributor of…
Content type: News & Analysis
Investigations by Privacy International in co-operation with VICE Motherboard, reveal that Hacking Team has sold its Remote Control System to the US Drug Enforcement Agency and US military via a front company based in the US.
The investigation catalogues what is known about Hacking Team’s intrusive spyware that can remotely switch on the microphone on mobile phones, activate webcams, as well as modify and/or extract data from the computer or phone itself. Whether the export was corrected…
Content type: News & Analysis
German surveillance technology company Trovicor played a central role in expanding the Ethiopian government's communications surveillance capacities, according to a joint investigation by Privacy International and netzpolitik.org.
The company, formerly part of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), provided equipment to Ethiopia's National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) in 2011 and offered to massively expand the government's ability to intercept and store internet…
Content type: News & Analysis
UPDATE: Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has announced plans to disband Argentina's intelligence agency. Go here for more, and keep reading below.
This post was originally published on 20 January 2015 by Privacy International's partner in Argentina, the Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC). To read the original post, please go here.
In view of the serious incidents that took place on 18 January 2015, the Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC)…
Content type: News & Analysis
The right to privacy is on the frontline of a struggle that has seen a number of other constitutionally protected rights threatened during the last few bloody months of Kenya's ongoing security crisis.
After at least 64 people were killed in two attacks by Al Shabaab militants in late 2014, members of the ruling Jubilee Coalition swiftly moved to introduce an omnibus bill, the Security Laws (Amendment) Bill 2014. The bill, which was hastily enacted into law despite street…