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Content type: Video
Links- Read PI's research- Learn more about Rhizomatica- Learn more about Lũa and his work on Starlink- We'd love to hear from you! Share your thoughts, case studies, or ideas about vertical mergers using our survey- More about X and Starlink's legal trouble in Brazil- Our podcast about competition with Dr Deni Mantzari
Content type: Long Read
What happened?On 19 July 2024, American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike released an update to its CrowdStrike Falcon software that ultimately caused 8.5 million computers running Microsoft Windows to crash. The damage done was both deep and wide: deep because the computers affected were unable to recover without direct user intervention. Wide because a whole range of companies - from airlines to healthcare to media - across a whole range of countries - from Sweden to India to New Zealand -…
Content type: Long Read
In 2019, the Waorani achieved a huge legal victory against the Ecuadorian government. They opposed the sale of millions of hectares of their rainforest to new oil companies, a forest that forms part of the home and territory of seven different Indigenous peoples in the southern Ecuadorian Amazon. Nemonte Nenquimo, as the first female leader of the Waorani of Pastaza and co-founder of the nonprofit Alianza Ceibo, and plaintiff in this case, has been a powerful advocate for her community’s…
Content type: Examples
Amazon is calling for the dismissal of a complaint issued by the National Labor Relations Board after two warehouse workers in the US state of Georgia claimed they faced retaliation, surveillance, and questioning after they led employee complaints about policy changes. Amazon, in common with other companies such as Trader Joe's and Starbucks, is claiming that following a recent US Supreme Court decision ending the "Chevron deference" principle, the NLRB's complaint violates the US constitution…
Content type: Long Read
IntroductionIn early October this year, Google announced its AI Overviews would now have ads. AI companies have been exploring ways to monetise their AI tools to compensate for their eye watering costs, and advertising seems to be a part of many of these plans. Microsoft have even rolled out an entire Advertising API for its AI chat tools.As AI becomes a focal point of consumer tech, the next host of the AdTech expansion regime could well be the most popular of these AI tools: AI chatbots.…
Content type: Long Read
IntroductionHarnessing new digital technology to improve people’s health is now commonplace across the world. Countries and international organisations alike are devising digital health strategies and looking to emerging technology to help solve tricky problems within healthcare. At the same time, more and more start-ups and established tech companies are bringing out new, and at times innovative, digital tools aimed at health and wellbeing.
Content type: Long Read
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, major tech platforms have been rapidly evolving their business models. Despite their dominance in various markets, tech giants like Google and Meta are venturing into new territories to expand their user base. One of the most striking ventures has been their foray into the "connectivity market" through substantial, and occasionally unsuccessful, investments in network infrastructure.
Many tech companies are investing resources into network infrastructure, either…
Content type: Examples
Workers at a St Peters, Missouri Amazon warehouse have filed an unfair labour practice charge with the US National Labor Relations Board alleging that Amazon has interfered with employees' right to unionise by intrusively surveilling them. Constant video and audio recording analysed by AI enables the company to discipline hundreds of thousands of workers and making it hard for them to talk to each other about working conditions, injuries, and other issues. In Europe, more than 20 labour…
Content type: Explainer
Behind every machine is a human person who makes the cogs in that machine turn - there's the developer who builds (codes) the machine, the human evaluators who assess the basic machine's performance, even the people who build the physical parts for the machine. In the case of large language models (LLMs) powering your AI systems, this 'human person' is the invisible data labellers from all over the world who are manually annotating datasets that train the machine to recognise what is the colour…
Content type: Long Read
IntroductionFor years PI has been documenting the market dominance and associated power of Big Tech over the digital economy, and the threats this poses to our privacy and wider rights.The digital economy is characterised by a handful of Big Tech companies that have established and maintained dominance over the digital market through opaque and exploitative practices. Big Tech exploits the data of those who use their platforms in ways which interfere with our privacy and wider rights. In…
Content type: Long Read
Table of contentsIntroductionWeighing the (potential) benefits with the risksPrivacy rights and the right to healthThe right to healthPrivacy, data-protection and health dataThe right to health in the digital contextWhy the drive for digitalImproved access to healthcarePatient empowerment and remote monitoringBut these same digital solutions carry magnified risks…More (and more connected) dataData leaks and breachesData sharing without informed consentProfiling and manipulationTools are not…
Content type: Long Read
In 2024, Privacy International (PI) continued to produce real change by challenging governments and corporations that use data and technology to exploit us.Since the beginning of the year, we’ve achieved some wins and would like to share the most recent ones with you.Creating change is hard, and takes time. We have to uncover problems, draw attention to them, and pressure for change. In the latest quarter, we’ve been able to compel disclosure on algorithms used in immigration cases, and find…
Content type: Examples
Companies like the Australian data services company Appen are part of a vast, hidden industry of low-paid workers in some of the globe's cheapest labour markets who label images, video, and text to provide the datasets used to train the algorithms that power new bots. Appen, which has 1 million contributors, includes among its clients Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta. According to Grand View Research, the global data collection and labelling market was valued at $2.22 billion in 2022 and is…
Content type: Examples
French data protection agency CNIL has fined Amazon's French warehouse management unit €32 million, or about 3% of its turnover, for its "excessively intrusive" surveillance of the performance of its thousands of staff. The system relied on data collected from the scanners warehouse staff use to process packages. CNIL said the surveillance placed workers under continuous pressure and forced them to justify absences, as the scanners timed inacctivity to the second and also penalised workers for…
Content type: Long Read
In 2023, Privacy International continued to produce real change in the world. We kept challenging governments and corporations that use data and technology to exploit us; pushed for new legislative standards; educated and campaigned with others.
And, we produced HUGE impact that directly affects each of us.
Here's a selection of our biggest achievements from last year.
French Data Protection regulator (CNIL) fined Doctissimo and Criteo
Following PI’s complaint, in May 2023, CNIL fined French…
Content type: Examples
When the Los Angeles Police Department opted to monitor the messages posted in forums on Neighbors, a companion app to Amazon's Ring doorbell cameras, the system forwarded over 13,000 messages in just over two years. Research shows, however, that this type of surveillance does a poor job of deterring property crime. A study of Neighbors posts in LA also shows that posters typically live in whiter, more affluent districts, and about 30% of posts did not describe criminal activity, just behaviour…
Content type: Examples
An eight-country study of Amazon employees has found that 57% say the company's performance monitoring system damages their mental health, 51% (65.7% of drivers) say it's had a negative effect on their physical health, and 59% feel the monitoring is excessive. In addition, 58% say Amazon doesn't explain clearly how it uses the data it collects on workers. Injury rates at Amazon warehouses are above the industry average.https://uniglobalunion.org/news/globalsurvey23/Publication: UNI Global…
Content type: Examples
Workers in Amazon warehouses are tracked closely by a system that records every minute of "time off task" via the radio frequency handheld scanners workers use to track customer packages. Breaching strict time off task time limits can get an employee fired. Time off task includes bathroom breaks, talking to other Amazon employees, or going to the wrong floor of a warehouse: - managers may be required to ask offenders to account for each missing minute. https://www.vice.com/en/article/…
Content type: Examples
AI-powered cameras made by the startup Netradyne and used in Amazon's delivery vans incorrectly penalises drivers for events beyond their control or which do not constitute unsafe driving such as if they are cut off by another vehicle. The data collected by the cameras is sent to Amazon, which uses the information to evaluate drivers' performance by assigning them with a score for safe driving. https://www.vice.com/en/article/88npjv/amazons-ai-cameras-are-punishing-drivers-for-mistakes-…
Content type: Examples
A BBC Panorama investigation that brought hidden cameras into a UK-based Amazon warehouse found that workers walked up to 11 miles in a shift and had just 33 seconds on average to find each product, following instructions from a handset. Experts on stress at work say the warehouse conditions are ideal for increasing the risk of mental and physical illness.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25034598Publication: BBCPublication date: 2013-11-25Writer: BBC
Content type: Examples
Humans who review footage of warehouse workers flagged by Amazon’s AI computer vision system to check for employee errors - are themselves surveilled in detail to ensure they make punishing targets. The workers, who are paid as little as £212 a month to review thousands of images and videos per day, report physical problems, deteriorating eyesight, and cognitive exhaustion. https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-11-21/the-eyes-of-amazon-a-hidden-workforce-driving-a-vast-…
Content type: Long Read
In 2023, Privacy International continues to produce real change by challenging governments and corporations that use data and technology to exploit us.Since the beginning of the year, we had some significant achievements we're proud of and want to share with you. Take a look below to see how we are changing the world for the better.SpringBetter EU regulation of digital products PI’s continuous advocacy around the Cyber Resilience Act resulted in further adjustment of the…
Content type: Examples
Behind every powerful AI system are huge numbers of people labelling and clarifying data to train it, contracted by companies like Remotasks, a subsidiary of Silicon Valley-based data vendor Scale AI, whose customers include the US military and OpenAI. Often the workers, who are assigned tasks they don't understand for a purpose they don't know, are sworn to secrecy. Yet labelling is crucial; it can make the difference between a car stopping to spare the person walking a bike across the road or…
Content type: Examples
Technology companies that call themselves "AI first" rely on heavily surveilled gig workers who label data, deliver packages, moderate content, and perform gig work via platforms. Startups pressured by their venture capital funders even hire humans to pretend to be chatbots so they can claim to be "AI" companies. For these reasons, worker exploitation needs to be a central part of the discussion of the ethical development and deployment of AI systems.https://www.noemamag.com/the-exploited-labor…
Content type: Examples
A former Amazon warehouse worker writes that every day was "brutal" because of the "exploitative and dangerous" standards enforced by Amazon executives. Amazon's anxiety-inducing policies about bathroom use and low pay should be seen in context with fast food and retail workers, who frequently encounter violence on the job and many essential workers' struggle to afford the basic necessities of life. In response, workers are beginning to target investors as an important voice that can help…
Content type: Examples
An excerpt from the new book "Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door—Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy", describes in detail the tracking systems used in Amazon warehouses to ensure workers meet their managers' targets. The system is a mix of surveillance, measurement, psychology, targets, incentives, slogans, and proprietary technologies.https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-way-amazon-uses-tech-to-squeeze-performance-out-of-workers-deserves-its-own-name-bezosism-…
Content type: Examples
Documents filed with the US National Labor Relations Board show that Amazon issues warehouse workers with radio-frequency handheld scanners to track and record every minute of "time off task". The filing is part of a dispute at the State Island Amazon warehouse, where workers voted to unionise in 2022. Managers must ask the person with the most "time off task", which includes time spent in the bathroom, talking to other associates, and navigational errors, about their whereabouts for each "…
Content type: Examples
Amazon has begun issuing partner delivery companies with AI-enabled cameras to monitor and track drivers' behaviour on the road. The cameras add another layer of monitoring to existing requirements to run the smartphone app Mentor; drivers complain that the app's bugs lead to unfair disciplinary action against them; the app may also follow them into their homes. Drivers swap tips on gaming the app on Reddit.https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/12/amazon-mentor-app-tracks-and-disciplines-delivery-…
Content type: Examples
Amazon delivery partner companies are ordering their drivers to turn off Amazon's Mentor monitoring app so they can take more risks in order to hit Amazon's delivery targets. Mentor, made by a company called eDriving, is a smartphone app Amazon uses to monitor drivers in Amazon-branded vans that tracks drivers' speed, braking, acceleration, and cornering; it also detect "phone distraction" and gives drivers a safe driving score. Amazon has pushed the liability for infractions onto the more than…
Content type: Examples
Numerous video clips from Amazon's in-van driver-facing surveillance cameras are appearing on Reddit in violence of Amazon's stated privacy policies and raising questions about drivers' privacy. The videos are clearly not being posted by drivers themselves, but come from inside Amazon delivery partners, though who is posting them is unknown. The cameras capture all aspects of drivers road behaviour; the company claims they protect road safety. Drivers say they do not have access to the videos.…