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Content type: Long Read
9th August 2018
Creative Commons Photo Credit: Source
In the midst of continued widespread public outrage at the US government’s brutal ‘zero-tolerance’ policy around immigration – multiple data and analytics companies have quietly avoided answering questions about their role in feeding the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s data backbone. These companies are bidding to work with an agency that has time and time again shown itself to be a brutal and problematic.
Privacy International has…
Content type: News & Analysis
9th October 2018
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On 10 October 2018, the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a hearing titled “Consumer Data Privacy: Examining Lessons From the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act".
The Senate will hear from:
Dr. Andrea Jelinek, Chair, European Data Protection Board
Mr. Alastair Mactaggart, Board Chair, Californians for Consumer Privacy
Ms. Laura Moy, Executive Director and Adjunct Professor of Law,…
Content type: News & Analysis
8th November 2018
Our team wanted to see how data companies that are not used to being in the public spotlight would respond to people exercising their data rights. You have the right under the EU General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") to demand that companies operating in the European Union (either because they are based here or target their products or services to individuals in the EU) delete your data within one month. We wrote to seven companies and requested that they delete our data, and we've made…
Content type: Examples
3rd May 2018
Documents submitted as part of a 2015 US National Labor Relations Board investigation show that Walmart, long known to be hostile to unions, spied on and retaliated against a group of employees who sought higher wages, more full-time jobs, and predictable schedules. In combating the group, who called themselves the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), Walmart hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin, contacted the FBI, and set up an internal Delta team…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
In July 2018, Election Systems and Software (ES&S), long the top US manufacturer of voter machines, admitted in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) that it had installed pcAnywhere remote access software and modems on a number of the election management systems it had sold between 2000 and 2006. The admission was in direct contradiction to the company's response for a New York Times article earlier in the year on US voting machines' vulnerability to hacking. ES&S says it stopped…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
In the run-up to the November 2018 US midterm elections, Vice tested Facebook's new system of mandatory "Paid for" disclosure intended to bring greater transparency to the sources of ads relating to "issues of national importance". Placing political ads requires a valid ID and proof of residence. Vice found that Facebook quickly approved ads the site attempted to place that named Islamic State, US vice president Mike Pence, and Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez in the "Paid for"…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
A combination of entrenched and litigious voting machine manufacturers with immense control over their proprietary software and a highly complex and fragmented voting infrastructure mean that even though concerns were raised as early as 2004 about the security of US voting machines, the 2018 midterm election saw little improvement. The machines in use in the more than 10,000 US election jurisdictions are all either optical-scan or direct-recording electronic (DRE). Optical-scan, which scans…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
In the months leading up to the US 2018 midterm elections, Republican officials in Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina made moves they described as ensuring voting integrity but which critics saw as blocking voter access. In Georgia, where Secretary of State Brian Kemp is charged with enforcing election law and was simultaneously running for governor, election officials blocked 53,000 applications to register, 70% of which are those of African-Americans, under a law requiring personal…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
In July 2018, Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor appointed to look into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, charged 12 Russian intelligence officers with hacking Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee by spearphishing staffers. The charges include conspiracy to commit an offence against the US, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to launder money, and conspiracy to access computers without authorisation. The hack led to the release of…
Content type: Examples
3rd May 2018
In 2016, supporters of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul for president were surprised to begin getting emails from the Trump campaign soon after their candidates dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination. In an investigation, CNNMoney found that nearly every failed 2016 presidential candidate sold, rented, or loaned their supporters' email addresses to other candidates, marketers, charities, and private companies. From analysing thousands of emails and Federal Election Commission records,…
Content type: Examples
4th December 2018
In May 2018, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement abandoned the development of machine learning software intended to mine Facebook, Twitter, and the open Internet to identify terrorists. The software, announced in the summer of 2017, had been a key element of president Donald Trump's "extreme vetting" programme and expected to flag at least 10,000 people a year for investigation. ICE decided instead to opt for a contractor who could provide training, management, and human personnel to do the…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
With only days to go before the 2018 US midterm elections, a federal judge ruled that the state of Georgia must change its "exact match" law that required voter registrations with even the tiniest variation from other official identifications to be flagged as potential non-citizens unless they could produce proof of identity. A group of civil rights groups sued Republican secretary of state Brian Kemp, in charge of the elections despite also running for governor, to change the procedure, which…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
A little over a month before the US 2018 midterm elections, Twitter updated its rules to reduce manipulation of its platform. Among the changes, the company outlined the factors it would use to determine whether an account is fake and should be removed, provided an update on its automated detection and enforcement actions, and announced some changes to its user interface, which included reminding candidates to turn on two-factor authentication and encouraging US voters to register and vote.…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
A few months before the US 2018 midterm elections, the Trump campaign team signed a contract with the newly-formed Virginia-based company Excelsior Strategies to exploit the first-party data the campaign had collected. The contract was set up by Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale, who built the list as the digital director of Trump's 2016 campaign and began renting it out soon after the November 2016 elections.
Subject to the Trump's campaign veto authority, Excelsior rents out this…
Content type: Long Read
2nd February 2018
“FISA section 702 reauthorisation” might not sound like it matters very much to very many people, but it’s pretty dramatic: in short, last month US lawmakers rejected a bill which would have provided protections for US citizens – constitutionally protected against being spied on by US spy agencies – from being spied on, and instead voted to extend their powers to do so.
In the fall out, it’s worth considering just why such mass surveillance powers are such a big issue, how the promise of…
Content type: Advocacy
7th December 2018
Consumers benefit from the existence of competitive markets, in which they can freely choose among a wide range of products and services. Competition policy plays an important role in this regard by ensuring that competition is not disrupted in a way that can harm consumers directly (e.g. leading to price increases or less choice) or indirectly (e.g. weakening competition as a process by hampering the ability of firms to compete on the merits).
Content type: News & Analysis
14th August 2018
This piece originally appeared here.
Creative Commons Photo Credit: Source
Tech competition is being used to push a dangerous corporate agenda.
High-tech industries have become the new battlefield as the United States and China clash over tariffs and trade deficits. It’s a new truism that the two countries are locked in a race for dominance in artificial intelligence and that data could drive the outcome.
In this purported race for technological high ground, the argument often goes, China…
Content type: News & Analysis
5th September 2018
Creative Commons Photo Credit: Source
Just about everyone in Washington has found something to dislike about the tech industry: Democrats especially, are worried about foreign interference in the 2016 election — meanwhile some Republicans are more concerned about bias against conservatives of platforms and on top of it all President Trump has been tweeting about antitrust and competition.
Privacy International is a vocal critic of data exploitation more generally, and the systemic…
Content type: Long Read
17th July 2018
Privacy International (PI) has today released a new report, 'Teach 'em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance', showing how countries with powerful security agencies are training, equipping, and directly financing foreign surveillance agencies.
Spurred by advances in technology, increased surveillance is both powered by and empowering rising authoritarianism globally, as well as attacks on democracy, rights, and the rule of law.
As well as providing a background to the issue, the report…
Content type: Report
17th July 2018
Countries with powerful security agencies are spending literally billions to equip, finance and train security and surveillance agencies around the world — including authoritarian regimes. This is resulting in entrenched authoritarianism, further facilitation of abuse against people, and diversion of resources from long-term development programmes.
Privacy International's report 'Teach 'em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance' examines this problem closely, providng examples from US, China…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
In August 2018, the US Democratic National Committee notified the FBI that the San Francisco-based security company Lookout and the cloud service provider DigitalOcean had detected an attempted hack targeted at the DNC voter database. The attack took the form of a fake DNC login page intended to trick people into disclosing their usernames and passwords thinking they were accessing the DNC's VoteBuilder platrform. Lookout believes it found the site within 30 minutes of its going up online, but…
Content type: Advocacy
31st May 2018
Social media, which can include a wide range of online platforms and applications, can be revealing and sensitive, making any collection or retention highly invasive. The effect would be unjustified intrusion into the private lives of those affected, undermining their freedom of speech and affecting everyone in their networks, including US citizens.
By normalising the practice internationally, other state authorities may reciprocate by demanding social media handles of US citizens,…
Content type: Report
1st August 2018
Privacy International welcomes the opportunity to file these comments in advance of the Federal Trade Commission’s public hearings on competition and consumer protection in the 21st century.
Content type: Examples
3rd May 2018
In 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California published a report revealing that the social media monitoring service Geofeedia had suggested it could help police track protesters. The report's publication led Twitter and Facebook to restrict Geofeedia's access to their bulk data. ACLUNC argued that even though the data is public, using it for police surveillance is an invasion of privacy. Police are not legally required to get a warrant before searching public data; however…
Content type: Examples
20th December 2018
Facebook ads purchased in May 2016 by the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russian troll farm, urged users to install the FaceMusic app. When installed, this Chrome extension gained wide access to the users' Facebook accounts and web browsing behaviour; in some cases it messaged all the user's Facebook Friends. The most successful of these ads specifically targeted American girls aged 14 to 17 and said the app would let them play their favourite music on Facebook for free and share it with…
Content type: News & Analysis
24th August 2018
Around the world, from North America to Europe and Asia, governments are starting to roll out smart meters. While the technology promises increased energy efficiency through greater consumer control over energy consumption, smart meters also raise serious privacy concerns. Smart meters collect energy usage data at high frequencies - typically every five, fifteen or 30 minutes. That level of granularity reveals how much electricity is being used in a home and when, which in turn can paint an…
Content type: Press release
20th June 2018
Gus Hosein, Executive Director of Privacy International:
The US federal government's cruel zero tolerance immigration policy has received widespread and international condemnation. In addition to the policy's clear moral failure it is also in violation of the government's legal obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which includes protecting families from unnecessary interference by the government.
The US government needs to understand that the…
Content type: Press release
5th June 2018
On the five year anniversary of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden leaking a massive trove of classified information that has since transformed our understanding of government mass surveillance, Dr Gus Hosein, Executive Director of Privacy International said:
“Is it enough for your government to tell you ‘we’re keeping you safe, but we’re not going to tell you how’? Edward Snowden asked himself this profoundly important question five years ago. We’re thankful he did.
His decision to expose the…
Content type: Press release
17th July 2018
Privacy International has today released a report that looks at how powerful governments are financing, training and equipping countries — including authoritarian regimes — with surveillance capabilities. The report warns that rather than increasing security, this is entrenching authoritarianism.
Countries with powerful security agencies are spending literally billions to equip, finance, and train security and surveillance agencies around the world — including authoritarian regimes. This is…
Content type: Advocacy
8th November 2018
Today, Privacy International has filed complaints against seven data brokers (Acxiom, Oracle), ad-tech companies (Criteo, Quantcast, Tapad), and credit referencing agencies (Equifax, Experian) with data protection authorities in France, Ireland, and the UK.
It’s been more than five months since the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect. Fundamentally, the GDPR strengthens rights of individuals with regard to the protection of their data, imposes more stringent…