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Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International welcomes the UK House of Lord’s Justice and Home Affairs Committee’s investigation and subsequent report on electronic monitoring.The UK currently monitors some individuals who have interacted with the criminal justice system, and all individuals released on bail from immigration detention, through fitted GPS tags and non-fitted monitoring devices.In the immigration context, the Home Office touts electronic monitoring as a less restrictive way to maintain contact with…
Content type: News & Analysis
18th December is International Migrants Day. It’s a day designated by the United Nations, dedicated to recognising the “important contribution of migrants while highlighting the challenges they face.”As we write this third edition of our annual post for International Migrants Day, in many ways the outlook for the rights of people on the move feels even bleaker than it did a year ago.We have seen governments trying to “rewrite global refugee laws”, tightening restrictions on migrants’ rights,…
Content type: Long Read
A tribunal in the UK has overturned a legal judgment about Clearview’s objectionable scraping of images of people’s faces from the internet. The latest ruling helpfully clarifies what should be in scope of data protection law, and provides a sensible view on how companies that operate across many jurisdictions should not be able to dodge the application of local laws.Clearview’s model of selling intrusive surveillance to law enforcement agencies is not just grim, it also undermines people’s…
Content type: Video
LinksBorder Violence Monitoring Network’s workBVMN's website https://borderviolence.eu/Surveillance Tech Serbia Report: https://borderviolence.eu/reports/surveillance-technologies-at-european…Cyprus Borderscape: https://cyprusborderscape.com/BalkanDac: https://borderviolence.eu/reports/decoding-balkandac-navigating-the-eu-…Samos CCAC : https://borderviolence.eu/reports/controlled-and-confined-unveiling-the…Use of mercenaries for pushbacks in Cyprus. https://borderviolence.eu/reports/…
Content type: News & Analysis
Governments weaponising data against people is one of the top themes of 2025. In this latest example, tax agency uses post-9/11 era travel surveillance to administer tax benefits, and to wrongly accuse people of fraud.The UK Government has paused cuts to parents’ child benefits after it was revealed that one of its surveillance practices had made numerous mistakes.Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HRMC), the UK tax agency, had suspended 23,500 payments to nearly 350 families, erroneously…
Content type: Video
Links Read more about your optionsLearn more about PI's position on the Cyber Resilience Act
Content type: Long Read
We are living through a moment of profound transformation as military imperatives and corporate interests are no longer separate threads in the fabric of technological innovation. Instead they are inseparably interwoven. “Innovation” is increasingly framed not as a response to a concrete human need, but in terms of strategic advantage, deterrence, and national security. States and corporations alike are turning to technology which blurs the line between civilian life and military power to…
Content type: Report
Technologies that have both military and civilian applications are known as "dual-use”. Drone start-ups, arms giants, and satellite manufacturers are among the tech companies which are increasingly marketing surveillance products for both military and civil applications, leading to a blurring of the lines between the two domains. This has serious implications for our freedoms, and the militarisation of our societies, and the use of publicly-funded research.Exploring the growing influence of…
Content type: Report
Technologies that have both military and civilian applications are known as "dual-use”. Drone start-ups, arms giants, and satellite manufacturers are among the tech companies which are increasingly marketing surveillance products for both military and civil applications, leading to a blurring of the lines between the two domains. This has serious implications for our freedoms, the militarisation of our societies, and the use of publicly-funded research, particularly from the European Union.…
Content type: Long Read
In England’s schools, children are not only pupils but also data subjects. From the moment they are born, a digital record begins to take shape — one that will follow them through nursery, primary school, secondary education, and in many cases well into adulthood.What was once a matter of paper registers and filing cabinets has become a complex infrastructure of digital systems, databases, and analytics tools, managed by both the state and private companies, for AI, surveillance, and more.…
Content type: Video
All of our militarisation workBelow are all the articles we talk about in this episode:What is Militarisation of Tech?Key Concerns Regarding Governance in the Era of Militarisation of Tech“Killer Robots”: Read PI's statement during informal consultations on autonomous weapons systems in New YorkHow Data Drives the Militarisation of TechOn the Applicable Legal Frameworks and Regulatory Gaps: International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights LawWe have a mailing list specifically for…
Content type: Advocacy
On 3 July 2025, the General Conference of the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted a resolution committing the ILO to adopt a Convention supplemented by a Recommendation concerning decent work in the platform economy following a second discussion on this issue in 2026. PI welcomes the ILO's decision as a step in the right direction to protect platform workers who have been at the forefront of new forms of data exploitation in the workplace as we have been documenting for many…
Content type: Long Read
In their gold rush to build cloud and AI tools, Big Tech is also enabling unprecedented government surveillance. Thanks to reporting from The Guardian, +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Intercept, we have insights into the murky deals between the Israeli Government and Big Tech firms. Designed to insulate governments from scrutiny and accountability, these deals bode a dark future for humanity, one that is built using the same tools that once promised a bright, positive world.On 25 September…
Content type: Long Read
Across the world facial recognition technologies (FRT) are increasingly being deployed in public and private spaces without adequate laws or regulation to protect individuals from the grave risks they pose to human rights. States rely more and more on this technology for public mass surveillance, enabling an authoritarian omnipresence over people’s activities, movements, and expressions at all times, often without them knowing.Over the past few years we have raised concerns about the rapid…
Content type: Long Read
Governments are increasingly relying on data-intensive systems, both to wage wars and to administer public services. These systems, increasingly provided by the same firms using similar tools, will come to affect our day-to-day lives whether we are in war zones or town squares. This is the era of Militarisation of Tech.The technologies that our governments rely on to deliver services and pursue their objectives are becoming increasingly data-intensive and militarised, which threatens our…
Content type: Long Read
Legal regimes governing situations of armed conflict and peace time have traditionally been clearly defined, leaving little to no doubt as to which regime applies to what situation. However, the Militarisation of Tech challenges this tidy distinction. Instead we are seeing the blurring of lines between actors, technologies, and the areas of deployment, financing, export, and regulations of certain technologies. This growing overlap between on the ground and remote, between war and peace,…
Content type: Long Read
We are at a war footing as we enter an era where the tech world is increasingly defined by conflict. Innovation has never been driven solely by social needs, market forces or the common good. Military imperatives have periodically played central roles in steering the development of new generations of technologies. For instance, the origins of the internet can be traced back to defence research and initiatives like the ARPANET.Now we are witnessing a significant shift: states and corporations…
Content type: Long Read
Governments are rapidly militarising our societies. They are already increasing military spending, undermining civil rights protections, and reducing social protection programmes. Governments already depend on the private sector for delivering public services, through public-private partnerships.Now they are looking to the tech industry to design the next generation battlefield. As new technologies are at the core of this shift, industry is keenly adapting.Big Tech firms are militarising,…
Content type: Long Read
There’s a revolution occurring in how war and conflict are waged. New data-intensive systems are being developed; battlefields are testing grounds for a new generation of tech; and commercial tech infrastructure is now supporting military operations.Data plays a key role in this revolution. Data is used to train and test systems, and the systems are fed data to target operations, communities, and individuals.While intelligence has long informed warfare, now we’re seeing the very same…
Content type: Advocacy
We have been concerned about the expansion of EdTech includes a wide range of tools that enable the surveillance of students and academic staff, often facilitating monitoring by both public authorities and private entities.We brought our concerns responding to the UN Special Rapporteur on education call for contributions on safety as an element of the right to education and a precondition for its full realization.We considered this report an essential platform to examine the complex interplay…
Content type: Examples
Popular educational apps have access to reams of private data that could result in privacy and security violations, a new study has found.25 apps were tested, with many found to request access to the users’ camera, calendar, location, contacts, and the ability to record audio, among other permissions.Apps like Canvas Student, Coursera, Duolingo, Remind, and Simplilearn can access Google, Meta, and Samsung accounts on the device - something that is not necessary for them to work, but which could…
Content type: Long Read
On the basis of a year of legal research by PI as well as documents obtained by other civil society organisations, and evidence provided by legal representatives fighting these automated systems on behalf of their clients, on the 18th August 2025, we issued a formal complaint to the UK Information Commissioner (ICO) regarding the UK Home Office’s use of two ‘automated recommendation-making tools’ (ARMTs), the Identify and Prioritise Immigration Cases tool (IPIC) and the Electronic Monitoring…
Content type: Video
Links Maria's original rewilding article, with Robin Berjon, in Noema Maria's article 'This is your phone on feminism'A talk Maria gave about rewildingMaria's website where you can keep an eye to find out when her book is coming out!London Centric and the F**k you busMore about PI's work on competition
Content type: News & Analysis
Freedom of Information (FOI) requests have revealed the rapidly increasing scale of police mass facial recognition searches against the passport and immigration databases. New figures reveal that the number of searches of the passport database has “skyrocketed” from 2 in 2020 to 417 in 2023, and an almost sevenfold increase from 16 searches of the immigration database in 2023, to 102 in 2024. The Home Office and police forces are conducting these searches against over 150 million photos of the…
Content type: News & Analysis
We’ve been warning for a while now about the risks of AI Assistants. Are these assistants designed for us or to exploit us?The answer to that question hinges on whether the firms building these tools are considering security and privacy from the outset. The initial launches over the last couple of years were not promising.Now with OpenAI’s agent launch, users deserve to know whether these firms are considering these risks and designing their service for people in the real world. The OpenAI…
Content type: Video
LinksLearn more about Repro uncensoredRepro Uncensored incident report formAdriana Smith's caseMore about Adriana's casePrivacy International's Menstruation apps researchResearch on Bing's Typo-searchingMSI on the Global impact of Roe V. Wade being overturnedReport by Fòs Feminista on the Global Impact of the Dobbs DecisionMeta getting rid of factchecking functionAmazon USA report called Obstacles to Autonomy, which includes info on advertising account restrictionsAn report by the Independent…
Content type: Long Read
In June 2025, a team of researchers exposed how Meta and Yandex abused Android and browser-specific tools to track users outside of their application and collect associated data. The technique used to achieve this was truly innovative, and akin to malware behaviour. It exploited protocols to break the isolation between apps and browser, a fundamental security concept meant to protect users. This allowed these companies to tie the browsing history of individuals with their accounts on the…
Content type: News & Analysis
It feels like WhatsApp is everywhere. Who isn’t familiar with the gentle ding as a message arrives - the relentless group chats, or the customer service bots? According to recent statistics, the service is used regularly by nearly 3 billion people around the world. Its core service - end-to-end encrypted messaging - is essential in today’s society.But private messaging services like WhatsApp are costly to run, and not something people are accustomed to paying for. Securing an income stream for…
Content type: Examples
US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency awards $24 million for AI-enabled monitoring technologies
BlackSky Technology Inc. has secured a $24 million, four-year delivery order from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) as part of the Luno A Facility Operational Monitoring (FOMO) programme. BlackSky will use its AI-powered monitoring system to track changes in activity at global military and economic sites, including ports, airfields, railways, and military bases. The system integrates real-time satellite imagery with AI to deliver rapid intelligence. The company already monitors…
Content type: Examples
Sierra Space has been contracted by the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command to design next-gen “Resilient GPS” (R‑GPS) satellites. These are smaller, cost‑effective satellites intended to bolster the existing GPS constellation and protect them against jamming and spoofing by adversaries. The R-GPS program gained pace as per the new “Quick Start” authority established under Section 229 of the National Defense Authorization Act. This provision empowers the U.S. Space Force to rapidly launch…