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Content type: Long Read
2nd December 2022
In the UK, successive government ministers and members of parliament have made emotive proclamations about the malaise of "public sector fraud".
This year, former Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey said that the welfare system "is not a cash machine for callous criminals and it’s vital that the government ensures money is well spent...[and] fraud is an ever-present threat."
In 2013, the UK's minister for the disabled made numerous claims that there were "vast numbers of bogus disabled […
Content type: Long Read
22nd August 2022
Introduction
In response to the unprecedented social, economic, and public health threats posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Bank financed at least 232 "Covid-19 Response" projects. The projects were implemented across countries the World Bank classifies as middle and low-income.
This article will focus on eight (8) Covid-19 Response projects which sought to deliver social assistance to individuals and families on a "non-contributory" basis (this means that the intended beneficiaries…
Content type: Advocacy
24th May 2022
On 17 December 2021, we made a submission contributing to the UNSR on extreme poverty and human rights' forthcoming report which will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council. The report will be titled "Social protection: a reality check" and aims to highlight the obstacles that individuals and households face when seeking to access social protection.
We highlighted the systemic problems emerging from the increased digitalisation, automation and intrusive data collection in the “digital…
Content type: Case Study
10th June 2020
Students around the world are quickly turning into training-data for intrusive facial recognition technology. In Sweden, the national Data Protection Authority (DPA) ruled that students at Anderstorp High School in Skellefteå had their right to privacy violated by the testing of facial recognition software to take attendance.
The Skellefteå school board invited a private company, Tieto, to install facial recognition cameras across classrooms that would automatically register students’ class…
Content type: Case Study
20th April 2020
Over the past decade targeted advertisement has become exponentially more invasive. To enable targeted advertisement, massive amounts of data about individuals are collected, shared and processed often without their knowledge or consent. This information about us is then used to profile us and micro-target us to sell us products or influence our views.
This is a significant intrusion to our privacy inevitably affects our perogative not to reveal our thoughts; not to have our thoughts…
Content type: Examples
7th April 2020
Mexico is one of the biggest buyers of next-generation surveillance technology. And now data leaked to Forbes indicates it's taken an unprecedented step in becoming the first-known buyer of surveillance technology that silently spies on calls, text messages and locations of any mobile phone user, via a long-vulnerable portion of global telecoms networks known as Signalling System No. 7 (SS7).
The revelation was contained in what an anonymous source close claimed was internal sales information…
Content type: Examples
7th April 2020
The whistleblower said they were unable to find any legitimate reason for the high volume of the requests for location information. “There is no other explanation, no other technical reason to do this. Saudi Arabia is weaponising mobile technologies,” the whistleblower claimed.
The data leaked by the whistleblower was also seen by telecommunications and security experts, who confirmed they too believed it was indicative of a surveillance campaign by Saudi Arabia.
The data shows requests for…