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Content type: Press release
Hearing: Cross examination of senior GCHQ official about Intelligence Agencies’ use of massive databases of information about everyone in the UK
When: Monday 26 February 2018, 3.15pm
Where: Royal Courts of Justice, Court 28, Strand, London WC2A 2LL
Summary
This is the first time GCHQ have given open evidence in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (The Tribunal). It is also the first time they will be cross examined by Privacy International on serious misleading errors they provided in…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International's briefing on the UK's Data Protection Bill for the second reading in the House of Commons.
Content type: Press release
Privacy International and Open Rights Group have submitted a response to the Consultation on establishing a UK Privacy and Civil Liberties Board.
Content type: Press release
Privacy International today received an email from Saul Olivares, Sales and Marketing Director of Creativity Software, in response to the letter we sent to Creativity CEO Richard Lee yesterday.
Mr Olivares directed PI to an attached statement, in which Creativity stated that it was:
…proud to be a supplier of world class technology to MTN, in Iran and other countries. MTN is a company with the vision of being the leading telecommunications provider in emerging markets, with an avowed mission…
Content type: Press release
The Case
Privacy International v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs et al. (Bulk Personal Datasets & Bulk Communications Data challenge)
Date: 5-9 June 2017
Time: from 10:00 onwards
Location: Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand, London WC2A 2LL United Kingdom
Hearing overview
Next week’s hearing follows the Investigatory Powers Tribunal’s earlier judgment in October 2016, which ruled that three issues are to be determined:
…
Content type: News & Analysis
The recent announcement by the Minister for Justice that serious and organised crime will receive legislative attention from the Government and the Oireachtas is most welcome. However, the stated means of achieving this are deeply concerning for the Irish public and larger digital economy. The statements indicate that the Government intends to follow the British model of surveillance where Irish companies can be compelled to betray their users. Why would any user engage with a…
Content type: News & Analysis
This post was written by Chair Emeritus of PI’s Board of Trustees, Anna Fielder.
The UK Data Protection Bill is currently making its way through the genteel debates of the House of Lords. We at Privacy International welcome its stated intent to provide a holistic regime for the protection of personal information and to set the “gold standard on data protection”. To make that promise a reality, one of the commitments in this government’s ‘statement of intent’ was to enhance…
Content type: Advocacy
This briefing consolidates Privacy International's concerns on the UK Data Protection Bill as it reached Report Stage in the House of Lords.
Content type: Advocacy
The powers set out in the Investigatory Powers Act are wide ranging, opaque and lacking in adequate safeguards. The Government have now published updated Draft Codes of Practice for certain parts of the Act. Unfortunately, the Codes do little to solve the Act’s problems. Instead, they add little transparency, occasionally expand powers, and undermine some of the limited safeguards in the Investigatory Powers Act. These Codes demand close scrutiny. The unusually short timeframe for…
Content type: News & Analysis
The following appeared in the Daily Telegraph, and was written by Carly Nyst, Legal Director of Privacy International:
"Robert Hannigan, the new head of GCHQ, announced his arrival this week with a call for “greater co-operation” with security forces by tech companies. Hannigan’s article in the Financial Times illustrated vividly the destructive ideology that has driven the infiltration by the British and American intelligence agencies into every aspects of the digital realm – an…
Content type: News & Analysis
The elections in our midst here, there, and everywhere are increasingly resulting in governments who introduce policies that result in leaps backwards for dignity, equality, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Whether it is Poland or the Philippines, governments are overriding essential safeguards.
This week Britain’s proposed surveillance legislation took another step toward normalising mass surveillance. The United States of America has long promoted mass surveillance and maintains its…
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: Press release
Key points
Privacy International has obtained previously unseen government documents that reveal British spy agency GCHQ collects social media information on potentially millions of people.
GCHQ collected and accesses this information by gaining access to private companies’ databases.
Letters obtained by Privacy International reveal that the body tasked with overseeing intelligence agencies’ activities (the Investigatory Powers Commissioner) was kept in the dark as UK intelligence…
Content type: Press release
In today’s latest hearing in our ongoing legal challenge against the collection of massive troves of our personal data by the UK intelligence agencies, shocking new evidence has emerged about GCHQ’s attempts to yet again avoid proper independent scrutiny for its deeply intrusive surveillance activities.
In a truly breath-taking exchange of letters between the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (“IPCO”) and the Director of Legal Affairs at GCHQ, it has emerged that GCHQ have…
Content type: Advocacy
Thornsec is a piece of software developed by Privacy International’s Tech Team which is an automated way to deploy, test, and audit internal and external services for an organisation, saving a lot of time and creating a sustainable security model. We are using this software to run all of Privacy International’s services – website, calendar, project management tools, Tor hidden services, VPNs. The whole system runs on two servers and the whole cost is around US$1000 to set up.
Thornsec is…
Content type: Advocacy
This briefing covers Part 3 (law enforcement processing) and Part 4 (intelligence services processing) of the Data Protection Bill.
Content type: News & Analysis
This piece was written by PI Legal Office Millie Graham Wood.
“The UK is leading the way on modern data protection laws and we have worked closely with our EU partners to develop world leading data protection standards”[1] according to, Matt Hancock MP, Minister of State for Digital. However, the proposals in the UK Data Protection Bill continue and expand a highly secretive system which allows processing of personal data to be exempt from key safeguards and fundamental protections on…
Content type: Case Study
As society heads toward an ever more connected world, the ability for individuals to protect and manage the invisible data that companies and third parties hold about them, becomes increasingly difficult. This is further complicated by events like data breaches, hacks, and covert information gathering techniques, which are hard, if not impossible, to consent to. One area where this most pressing is in transportation, and by extension the so-called ‘connected car’.
When discussing connected…
Content type: Press release
Privacy International has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to compel disclosure of records relating to a 1946 surveillance agreement between the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, known as the “Five Eyes alliance”.* We are represented by Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic (MFIA). The most recent publicly available version of the Five Eyes surveillance agreement dates from 1955. Our complaint was filed before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International’s Data Exploitation Programme Lead was invited to give evidence to the Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence at the U.K. House of Lords. The session sought to establish how personal data should be owned, managed, valued, and used for the benefit of society.
Link to the announcement of the session: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/ai-committee/news-parliament-2017/data-evidence-session/
Full video recording of the session:…
Content type: Report
This report sheds light on the current state of affairs in data retention regulation across the EU post the Tele-2/Watson judgment. Privacy International has consulted with digital rights NGOs and industry from across the European Union to survey 21 national jurisdictions (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom).…
Content type: Press release
Key points
Privacy International surveyed 21 EU member states' legislation on data retention and examined their compliance with fundamental human rights standards
0 out of the 21 States examined by PI are currently in compliance with these standards (as interpreted in two landmark judgements by the Court of Justice of the European Union: Tele-2/Watson and Digital Rights Ireland)
Privacy International is calling for:
EU member states to review their legislation on data retention…
Content type: Press release
Privacy International, in partnership with 30+ national human rights organisations, has today written to national intelligence oversight bodies in over 40 countries seeking information on the intelligence sharing activities of their governments.
Countries may use secret intelligence sharing arrangements to circumvent international and domestic rules on direct surveillance. These arrangements can also lead to the exchange of information that can facilitate human rights abuses,…
Content type: Long Read
On 8 September 2017, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal decided to refer questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) concerning the collection of bulk communications data (‘BCD’) by the Security Intelligence Agencies from mobile network operators.
The BCD regime was initially secret. In an earlier judgment, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that the regime was not compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights prior to its public avowal, but (subject to…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International's response to the inquiry by the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence.
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International welcomes the aim of this Bill (Data Protection Bill), “to create a clear and coherent data protection regime”, and to update the UK data protection law, including by bringing the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Law Enforcement Directive (DPLED) - into the UK domestic system. This is Privacy International’s briefing on the Data Protection Bill for second reading in the House of Lords
Content type: Press release
On 5 October 2017, Privacy International will appear before the UK Court of Appeal to continue its challenge to the British government's large scale hacking powers. The case questions the decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) to sanction the UK government's power to hack broad categories of people or property without any individualised suspicion.
TIMELINE AND KEY POINTS
- Privacy International began fighting bulk government hacking in 2014 at the…