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Content type: News & Analysis
15th March 2021
We have set out our understanding of the NFI’s current functioning here.
The National Fraud Initiative is a data-matching exercise overseen by the Cabinet Office which allows a range of public and private sector entities to access personal data, exclusively for the purposes of preventing and detecting fraud. A current government consultation suggests expanding the NFI to include four new, wide-ranging purposes:
Data-matching to assist in the prevention and detection of crime (other than fraud…
Content type: Advocacy
3rd March 2021
Background
Giphy is a searchable database for Graphic Interchange Format (‘GIF’) files, stickers, emojis, text, videos and Arcade (remixable video games). This database can be queried through the Giphy search engine, either via its main website (giphy.com), its API or its SDK. Content obtained can then be shared via their URL or be integrated in another service such as a website or an app. Well known integrations of Giphy include messaging services like Whatsapp, Slack, Signal, Telegram, or…
Content type: Advocacy
23rd February 2021
Dear Home Secretary,
We are writing to you to demand urgent reform of how asylum seekers across the country are placed under surveillance through the very same device that is supposed to provide basic subsistence support to them.
As you know the Aspen Card is a kind of debit card given to asylum seekers, on which about £39 is credited every week to cover their basic subsistence needs. But, reportedly, the Aspen card is also used to closely monitor asylum seekers and how they spend their money…
Content type: Explainer
23rd February 2021
The UK Home Office provides basic subsistence support to people who are in the process of applying for asylum, as well as to those whose applications have been refused and are appealing their cases, in the form of an ‘Aspen Card’ - basically it’s a debit payment card, which can be used in any shop that accepts VISA debit payments. At the time of writing the programme is managed by corporate giant corporate giant Sodexo, but the administration of the payment system is soon going to go to a new…
Content type: Call to Action
23rd February 2021
The ‘Aspen Card’ is a debit payment card given to UK asylum seekers by the Home Office. It provides basic subsistence, but the Home Office can also use Aspen Cards to track exactly what asylum seekers are buying, and where and when they’re making their purchases. But it doesn’t just stop at surveillance. The Home Office can cut off asylum seekers’ access to money if their spending patterns don’t adhere to invisible rules.PLEASE TAKE 2 MINUTES TO JOIN OUR CAMPAIGN TO STOP ASPEN CARD SURVEILLANCE…
Content type: Video
23rd February 2021
Performed by an actor, this video is based on the real life testimony, transcribed below, of a UK asylum seeker's experience of using their Home Office issued 'Aspen Card' debit payment card.
I arrived in the UK in 2009 and I have been living here for over ten years now. I have used both the Aspen Card and the card that was issued by the Home Office before that, the Azure Card. When I was released from immigration detention I was destitute because I am not allowed to work and that’s how…
Content type: Video
23rd February 2021
Performed by an actor, this video is based on the real life testimony, transcribed below, of a UK asylum seeker's experience of using their Home Office issued 'Aspen Card' debit payment card.
I came to the UK from a country in Africa because I was fleeing persecution for religious reasons. When I first came to England I was caught by the police, placed in detention before then being released into a hostel. When I was in the hostel I was given my Aspen Card, while I was applying for…
Content type: Video
23rd February 2021
Performed by an actor, this video is based on the real life testimony, transcribed below, of a UK asylum seeker's experience of using their Home Office issued 'Aspen Card' debit payment card.
I came to the UK to claim asylum from a country in the Middle East because of the political situation in my country. In order to get away, I walked from where I live all the way to the Turkish border by foot, crossing the mountains. I stayed in Turkey only a short while and then took two lorries…
Content type: Advocacy
28th January 2021
Esta carta también está disponible en inglés.
Estimados Sres. Zuckerberg y Pichai,
En los últimos años, ustedes han sido pioneros en la creación de importantes herramientas de transparencia para ayudar a los usuarios de su plataforma a entender, conocer y contextualizar la propaganda electoral a las cuales se ven expuestos. Estamos de acuerdo en que los procesos de verificación de anunciantes y los repositorios de anuncios son salvaguardas claves contra la manipulación y la desinformación en…
Content type: Advocacy
28th January 2021
This letter is also available in Spanish.
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Pichai,
In the past few years, you have pioneered important transparency tools to help your platform users understand, learn about and contextualise the political advertising they see. We agree that advertiser verification processes and ad repositories are key safeguards against online manipulation and misinformation. However, we are saddened to observe that these benefits have not been equally distributed among your global…
Content type: Long Read
20th January 2021
Among the many challenges of 2020, the impact on elections around the world kept us all on the edge of our seats. 75 countries postponed national and local elections due to Covid 19. Of the elections that went ahead, we saw Covid safe measures at polling stations (South Korea led the way forward in April) an increase in postal voting (who can forget the USA, but also Poland) and political parties in Uganda conducting "virtual" campaigns as mass rallies and in person campaign meetings were…
Content type: Long Read
19th January 2021
Political parties depend on data to drive their campaigns, from deciding where to hold rallies, which campaign messages to focus on in which area, and how to target supporters, undecided voters and non-supporters, including with ads on social media. Political parties increasingly hire private companies to do the bulk of this work, and our primary concern is how these companies use personal data to “profile” people and drive election campaigning.
As part of PI’s programme of work on Defending…
Content type: News & Analysis
15th January 2021
Over the past years, there has been much attention paid to political advertising transparency on online platforms. Growing internet penetration and the rising popularity of social media have made social media platforms a key battlefield for political actors in the fight for votes, where political ads have proved themselves to be a popular weapon. This means online transparency towards voters has become more imperative than ever.
And yet, social media platforms’ regulation of political ads…
Content type: Advocacy
9th December 2020
Privacy International has written to the Southern Co-operative supermarket chain to express serious concerns and ask for assurances following a report that it "completed a successful trial using Facewatch [facial recognition] in a select number of stores".
Facewatch describes itself as a “cloud-based facial recognition security system [which] safeguards businesses against crime.” Premises using the system are alerted when Subjects of Interest (SOI) enter their premises through the use of…
Content type: Advocacy
2nd December 2020
Section 187 of the Data Protection Act read with Article 80 of the GDPR gives individuals the option to seek assistance from public interest non-profit organisations to take action against data controllers which have infringed their data rights. In this role, non-profit organisations may:
make complaints to the regulator on the individual’s behalf;
represent the individual in the courts when seeking a resolution of those complaints; and
bring legal claims against organisations they believe…
Content type: Long Read
10th November 2020
Privacy International (PI) and 13 other civil society organisations from Europe and Africa are calling for urgent reforms to EU aid and cooperation programmes to ensure they promote privacy protections in non-member countries and do not facilitate the use of surveillance which violates fundamental rights.
It comes following the public release of hundreds of documents obtained by PI after a year of negotiating with EU bodies under access to documents laws, which show:
How police and security…
Content type: News & Analysis
10th November 2020
The “EU Trust Fund for Stability and Addressing Root Causes of Irregular Migration and Displaced Persons in Africa” (EUTF for Africa) isn’t exactly headline news (and nor does it exactly roll off the tongue), but its influence is vast and will be felt for decades to come for millions of people across Africa.
Set up in the wake of the 2015 ‘migration crisis’ in Europe and largely made up of money earmarked for development aid (80% of its budget comes from development and humanitarian aid funds…
Content type: News & Analysis
15th October 2020
Privacy International (PI) has today warned UK regulatory and law enforcement bodies about the potential deployment of an extensive and potentially nationwide police facial recognition surveillance system. We are urging them to investigate and take steps to ensure that no ‘backdoor’ for unlawful facial recognition surveillance will be developed under the umbrella of a crime reporting system.
According to pricing and data-sharing templates, UK surveillance company Facewatch is offering to…
Content type: Long Read
21st September 2020
An edited version of this article was originally published on the EDRi website in September 2020.Introduction
Monopolies, mergers and acquisitions, anti-trust laws. These may seem like tangential or irrelevant issues for privacy and digital rights organisations. But having run our first public petition opposing a big tech merger, we wanted to set out why we think this is an important frontier for people's rights across Europe and indeed across the world.
In June, Google notified the European…
Content type: Advocacy
17th September 2020
Privacy International responded to a call for submissions of the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls in situations of crisis.
This submission builds on PI’s research highlighting the ways in which data exploitative technologies can obstruct the realisation of sexual and reproductive rights, and research carried out by our partners on the specific manifestations of these obstacles in multiple countries of…
Content type: News & Analysis
26th August 2020
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: Case Study
13th August 2020
Privacy matters. It matters when you’re walking the streets of your home town and when you’re fleeing your home in search of safety. It matters if you’re at a protest or if you’re in bed.
Our wellbeing in each of these instances depends on the protection of our privacy. No situation can be fully understood in isolation.
Unjustifiable intrusions on our privacy become a weapon to eradicate communities and prey upon refugees and asylum seekers, push people away from protests in fear of…
Content type: News & Analysis
27th July 2020
New technologies continue to present great risks and opportunities for any users but for some communities the implications and harms can have severe consequences and one of the sectors facing increasing challenges to keep innovating whilst protecting themselves and the people they serve is the humanitarian sector.
Over the course of engagement with the humanitarian sector, one of our key observations has been how risk assessments undertaken in the sector omitted to integrate a hollistic…
Content type: Advocacy
24th July 2020
Introduction
In February 2020, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) commenced an investigation into the proposed acquisition of Fitbit by Google, which was originally announced in November 2019.
In March 2020, we made a submission to the ACCC, arguing that the acquisition would very likely have onerous implications for both consumers and markets. We asked the Australian regulator to apply strict scrutiny and not let hisory once again repeat itself. We concluded that the…
Content type: News & Analysis
22nd July 2020
The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin together with Dr. Krisztina Huszti-Orbán, released today a key report on the “Use of Biometric Data to Identify Terrorists: Best Practice or Risky Business?”.
The report explores the human rights risks involved in the deployment of biometrics emphasising that
in the absence of robust rights protections which are institutionally embedded…
Content type: Long Read
21st July 2020
Immunity Passports have become a much hyped tool to cope with this pandemic and the economic crisis. Essentially, with immunity passports those who are 'immune' to the virus would have some kind of certified document - whether physical or digital. This 'passport' would give them rights and privileges that other members of the community do not have.
This is yet another example of a crisis-response that depends on technology, as we saw with contact-tracing apps. And it is also yet another…
Content type: Advocacy
17th July 2020
Identification systems across the world increasingly rely on biometric data. In the context of border management, security and law enforcement, biometric data can play an important role in supporting the investigation and prevention of acts of terrorism.
This Briefing aims to map out some of the implications of the adoption of identification systems based on biometrics.
Content type: Advocacy
8th July 2020
Privacy International and Hiperderecho made a joint submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) ahead of the Committee finalising the list of issues for the examination of Peru.
The submission builds on research commissioned by Privacy International and carried out by Hiperderecho on the state of reproductive rights in Peru, and how their exercise intersects with privacy and tech.
The submission is available in both English and…
Content type: Advocacy
1st July 2020
Privacy International responded to the call for submissions on Zimbabwe’s Cyber Security and Data Protection Bill, 2019.
According to its Memorandum, the Bill seeks to “consolidate cyber related offences and provide for data protection with due regard to the Declaration of Rights under the Constitution and the public and national interest.” The Bill also proposes the establishment of a Cyber Security Centre and a Data Protection Authority.
In its submission, PI applauds the positive aspects…