Search
Content type: Examples
According to internal documents obtained by the Brennan Center, the Polish “strategic communications” specialist Edge NPD, whose business is helping companies with market research, provided the Los Angeles Police Department with a free 40-day trial in which it collected nearly 2 million tweets, including thousands relating to six topics, including Black Lives Matter and “defund the police”. LAPD did not ultimately enter into a contract with the company; the documents do not say what the agency…
Content type: Examples
According to internal documents, the San Francisco Police Department illegally spied on thousands of Bay Area residents protesting in 2020 against the murder of George Floyd and racist police violence. To conduct its surveillance, the SFPD used a network of more than 300 video cameras in downtown’s Union Square even though the city had passed an ordinance in 2019 that banned SFPD and other city agencies from using facial recognition and requiring them to get approval before using other…
Content type: Examples
Internal documents show that local police coordinated with Enbridge, the oil company building the Line 3 pipeline through northern Minnesota, to track and crack down on indigenous opposition to the development in an initiative known as Opposition Driven Operational Threats (ODOT). Enbridge designed ODOT to spot emerging outside threats to its business, defining “threat!” as anything from reputational harm to property damage. In 2021, ODOT tracked more than a dozen “threat actors”, including…
Content type: Examples
At his 2021 trial, prosecutors used previously-unseen infrared footage from FBI airplane surveillance at 9,000 feet to attempt to show that 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse chased one of the two people he later claimed to have shot in self-defence. Rittenhouse travelled from his home in Illinois to Wisconsin to join a protest following the 2020 police shooting of Jacob Blake. Aerial surveillance of people in public places is legal in the US, but illegal if directed at a single person for an…
Content type: Advocacy
Despite repeated recommendations by the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly to review, amend or enact national laws to ensure respect and protection of the right to privacy, national laws are often inadequate and do not regulate, limit or prohibit surveillance powers of government agencies as well as data exploitative practices of companies.
Even when laws are in place, they are seldom enforced. In fact PI notes how it is often only following legal challenges in national or…
Content type: Long Read
Imagine your performance at work was assessed directly from the amount of e-mails sent, the amount of time consumed editing a document, or the time spent in meetings or even moving your mouse. This may sound ludicrous but your boss might be doing exactly that. There are more and more stories emerging of people being called into meetings to justify gaps in their work only to find out their boss had been watching them work without their knowledge.
The Covid-19 global pandemic has reshuffled the…
Content type: Press release
To mark 10 years of the Home Office's hostile environment, a coalition of charities last night projected a vast message on the Home Office's Lunar House building in South London, to draw attention to Home Secretary Priti Patel's plans to GPS ankle tag thousands of migrants - a coercive, costly, and dehumanising measure.
As part of a week of events to mark 10 years of the "hostile environment", a set of policies designed to make life difficult for what…
Content type: Advocacy
The proposal seeks to impose mandatory environmental and human rights due diligence on companies of a certain size that operate in certain sectors.
Our submissions address the very limited personal and material scope of the current draft of the Directive, which is unlikely to subject the most problematic technology and surveillance companies to the new due diligence obligations.
Content type: Key Resources
A. Risks to consider
Defamation: The law of defamation protects a person’s reputation against unjustified interference. You may get sued for defamation by a private actor you make allegations against. Defamation laws differ between jurisdictions and the burden of proof might be entirely on you.
Unlawful obtention of information: Depending on your jurisdiction, certain types of investigations might be in contravention of the law (such as publishing leaked information or hacking).…
Content type: Key Resources
Obtaining adequate information about a public-private partnership is often difficult, especially when sensitive areas of government are involved, such as intelligence and law enforcement. Information about such activities is often purposefully withheld from the public and guarded by excessive laws and punishments.
But if it is safe to access them, there are many methods and resources out there which can help. Many of these sources are already readily available online, while others require desk…
Content type: Key Resources
The UN Guiding Principles are a set of guidelines for states and companies to prevent, address and remedy human rights abuses committed in business operations. The UN Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the UN Guiding Principles in its resolution 17/4 of 16 June 2011.
The UN Guiding Principles provide the authoritative global standard for action to safeguard human rights in a business context. As such, in the course of an investigation, they can be used to assess the compliance of a…
Content type: Key Resources
Public-private partnerships might very well involve a technology that is well-known and already widely deployed in other contexts, but it might also be a ground for innovation and novelty.
We can identify two main types of innovation:
A new technology that isn’t widely used or hasn’t been deployed in real world context (outside of a lab or a research paper);
A new set of features added to an existing technology which greatly expand its performances and capabilities.
Another type of “…
Content type: Key Resources
You should check that certain documents and processes are in place so that the contracting state and company are accountable, that there is proper oversight, and adequate redress mechanisms. Note that you should consider the entire life cycle of the partnership. First at the procurement stage, has the procurement process for this contract followed local or international procurement rules? And are those procurement rules adequate? Has there been adequate transparency throughout the procurement…
Content type: Video
Links
Giacomo’s report on Europe’s Shady Funds to Border Forces in the Sahel https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/3223/europes-shady-funds-border-forces-sahel
Giacomo’s report on The European Chase for Saharan Smugglers https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3347/european-chase-saharan-smugglers
Privacy International’s disclosures on the EU’s surveillance aid https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/4291/surveillance-disclosures-show-urgent-need-reforms-eu-aid-…
Content type: Advocacy
Now is the time to strengthen not weaken data protection to keep us all safe. Here we outline some edited areas of our consultation response that highlight the impact of the proposed loss or weakening of many important protections:
The proposal to broadening consent and further processing for research purposes:
PI urges caution with regard to provisions that seek to potentially undermine the strict conditions around obtaining consent. The GDPR placed stronger conditions on obtaining consent…
Content type: Video
Links
You can check out IRPI Media at https://irpi.eu
Their series on surveillance (in Italian) is at https://irpimedia.irpi.eu/sorveglianze/
Their report on Med-Or (in English) is at https://irpimedia.irpi.eu/en-surveillances-medor-leonardo-marco-minniti/
Their report on Cy4Gate (in English) is at https://irpimedia.irpi.eu/en-surveillances-cy4gate-united-arab-emirates/
Content type: Report
Privacy International’s submissions for the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration inspection of the Home Office Satellite Tracking Service Programme
The Home Office have introduced 24/7 electronic monitoring and collection of the location data of migrants via GPS ankle tags. This seismic change cannot be overstated. The use of GPS tags and intention to use location data, kept for six years after the tag is removed, in immigration decision-making goes far beyond the mere…
Content type: Video
Links
Josoor International Solidarity’s website is at https://www.josoor.net
No Name Kitchen’s website https://www.nonamekitchen.org
Border Violence Monitoring Network’s Website is at https://www.borderviolence.eu
Their reports documenting violence and trends in Greece and the Balkans route are at https://www.borderviolence.eu/category/monthly-report/
Lighthouse Report’s investigations on pushbacks in the Aegean are available at https://www.lighthousereports.nl/investigation/…
Content type: Report
This briefing takes a look at the private intelligence industry, a collection of private detectives, corporate intel firms, and PR agencies working for clients around the world that have made London their hub.
Often staffed by ex-spooks, and promising complete secrecy, little is known about them. But reports over the years have exposed their operations, including things like hacking and targeting of anti-corruption officials, spying on peaceful environment activists, and running fake '…
Content type: Video
Links
The Enablers by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
PI's report
Submit your podcast questions
Sign up to our mailing list
Places to listen
You can listen and subscribe to the podcast where ever you normally find your podcasts:
Spotify | Apple podcasts | Castbox | Google podcasts | Overcast | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Peertube | Youtube | Soundcloud | Podbean | Podcast Republic | Breaker | Podcast Addict | Deezer | and more...
Content type: Long Read
Here are just 10 of our biggest achievements in 2021.
WE CHALLENGED COMPANIES TO CHANGE THEIR BUSINESS MODELS AND PRACTICES
In 2021 we effectively challenged big tech companies including Google, Facebook, Tecno, and smaller and equally urgent companies like Clearview AI, Web-IQ, Palantir etc. and achieved substantial impact including:
- Popular diet apps include better protections in their products
Many diet sites and apps ask you to take tests to create profiles of your body and eating…
Content type: Explainer
La guía "Manifestaciones Libres" es un documento que ofrece una serie de propuestas sobre cómo las personas que se manifiestan de forma pacífica deben protegerse durante un evento público. Encontrarás en esta guía descripciones de las herramientas de vigilancia a disposición de las autoridades durante protestas sociales, y cómo puedes protegerte de las mismas.
Puedes descargar la guía desde esta página, de la sección más abajo titulada "Attachments."
This guide was originally…
Content type: Explainer
La ‘Guía para protegerte digiralmente durante una protesta' es un documento enfocado en Colombia que recopila información básica sobre las capacidades de vigilancia que posee la policía colombiana, y mejores prácticas para evitarla. Encontrarás en esta guía definiciones, explicaciones y recomendaciones sobre la vigilancia a los dispositivos tecnológicos, las comunicaciones, la identidad y las redes sociales de las personas que protestan.
Puedes descargar la guía desde esta página, de la…
Content type: Explainer
The ‘Guide to Digital Safety and Privacy at Peaceful Protests’ has been produced by 7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media.
7amleh has adapted the content of PI's UK Free to Protest guide to fit the Palestinian context. The guide is organized in three sub-guides: (1) a guide to digital safety and privacy at peaceful protests; (2) a guide to surveillance of protesters’ faces and bodies; and (3) a guide to policing databases and predictive policing tools.
This guide was…