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Content type: News & Analysis
3rd September 2020
The Law Enforcement Data Service (LEDS) is a unified, common interface to a new mega-database currently being developed by the Home Office National Law Enforcement Data Programme (NLEDP). We believe that the development of the programme poses a threat to privacy and other rights and must be subjected to strong oversight, safeguards, and transparency measures.
As we explained in our analysis, the data in LEDS is vast, ever-increasing, worryingly mixes both evidential and intelligence material –…
Content type: Case Study
25th June 2020
Facial recognition technology (FRT) is fairly present in our daily lives, as an authentication method to unlock phones for example. Despite having useful applications, FRT can also be just another technology used by those in power to undermine our democracies and carry out mass surveillance. The biometric data collected by FRT can be as uniquely identifying as a fingerprint or DNA. The use of this technology by third parties, specially without your consent, violates your right to privacy.
The…
Content type: Long Read
25th June 2020
In April 2018, Amazon acquired “Ring”, a smart security device company best known for its video doorbell, which allows Ring users to see, talk to, and record people who come to their doorsteps.
What started out as a company pitch on Shark Tank in 2013, led to the $839 million deal, which has been crucial for Amazon to expand on their concept of the XXI century smart home. It’s not just about convenience anymore, interconnected sensors and algorithms promise protection and provide a feeling of…
Content type: Case Study
25th June 2020
The Ugandan government has a running contract with the Chinese tech giant, Huawei, to supply and install CCTV cameras along major highways within the capital, Kampala, and other cities.
While details of the contract remain concealed from the public, the Uganda Police Force (UPF) released a statement, simply confirming its existing business partnership for telecommunication and surveillance hardware, and software between the security force and Huawei. However, it is not clear whether the…
Content type: Case Study
25th June 2020
Well into the 21st century, Serbia still does not have a strong privacy culture, which has been left in the shadows of past regimes and widespread surveillance. Even today, direct police and security agencies’ access to communications metadata stored by mobile and internet operators makes mass surveillance possible.
However, a new threat to human rights and freedoms in Serbia has emerged. In early 2019, the Minister of Interior and the Police Director announced that Belgrade will receive “a…
Content type: News & Analysis
19th June 2020
IMSI catchers (or stingrays as they are known in the US) are one of the surveillance technologies that has come to the forefront again in the protests against police brutality and systemic racism that have been sparked by the murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020.
An International Mobile Subscriber Identity catcher – in short an “IMSI catcher” – is an intrusive piece of technology that can be used to locate and track all mobile phones that are switched on in a certain area. It does so by…
Content type: Press release
18th June 2020
Today, the ICO has issued a long-awaited and critical report on Police practices regarding extraction of data from people's phones, including phones belonging to the victims of crime.
The report highlights numerous risks and failures by the police in terms of data protection and privacy rights. The report comes as a result of PI’s complaint, dating back to 2018, where we outlined our concerns about this intrusive practice, which involves extraction of data from devices of victims, witnesses…
Content type: News & Analysis
11th June 2020
Yesterday, Amazon announced that they will be putting a one-year suspension on sales of its facial recognition software Rekognition to law enforcement. While Amazon’s move should be welcomed as a step towards sanctioning company opportunism at the expense of our fundamental freedoms, there is still a lot to be done.
The announcement speaks of just a one-year ban. What is Amazon exactly expecting to change within that one year? Is one year enough to make the technology to not discriminate…
Content type: News & Analysis
20th May 2020
In a legal challenge brought by French activist group, La Quadrature du Net (LGDN), the Conseil d’État, the French highest court, has ruled that the use of drones by the police in the context of monitoring compliance with Covid-19 lockdown measures was unlawful.
The ruling found that the imagery and footage captured by drones flying at a low altitude was personal data to the extent that individuals filmed were identifiable. Consequently, the operation of drones by the police amounted to data…
Content type: Long Read
6th May 2020
On 12 April 2020, citing confidential documents, the Guardian reported Palantir would be involved in a Covid-19 data project which "includes large volumes of data pertaining to individuals, including protected health information, Covid-19 test results, the contents of people’s calls to the NHS health advice line 111 and clinical information about those in intensive care".
It cited a Whitehall source "alarmed at the “unprecedented” amounts of confidential health information being swept up in the…
Content type: Press release
29th April 2020
Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash
Today Privacy International, Big Brother Watch, medConfidential, Foxglove, and Open Rights Group have sent Palantir 10 questions about their work with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) during the Covid-19 public health crisis and have requested for the contract to be disclosed.
On its website Palantir says that the company has a “culture of open and critical discussion around the implications of [their] technology” but the company have so far…
Content type: Long Read
3rd March 2020
The UK’s Metropolitan Police have began formally deploying Live Facial Recognition technology across London, claiming that it will only be used to identify serious criminals on “bespoke ‘watch lists’” and on “small, targeted” areas.
Yet, at the same time, the UK’s largest police force is also listed as a collaborator in a UK government-funded research programme explicitly intended to "develop unconstrained face recognition technology", aimed “at making face recognition ubiquitous by 2020". …
Content type: News & Analysis
7th January 2020
Cloud extraction allows law enforcement agencies to take huge amounts of your data from the Cloud via a legal back door. If law enforcement seize your phone or take it from a victim of crime, they can extract tokens or passwords from the device which lets them get access to data from apps such as Uber, Instagram, Slack, Gmail, Alexa and WhatsApp.
In so doing, law enforcement agencies can avoid official channels through cloud companies such as Google, Apple and Microsoft. There is no check on…
Content type: Press release
6th January 2020
A large number of apps on smart phones store data in the cloud. Law enforcement can access these vast troves of data from devices and from popular apps with the push of a button using cloud extraction technology.
Mobile phones remain the most frequently used and most important digital source for law enforcement investigations. Yet it is not just what is physically stored on the phone that law enforcement are after, but what can be accessed from it, primarily data stored in the Cloud. …
