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Content type: Explainer
La 'Guía de Protesta' es un documento que buscar concientizar sobre las herramientas tecnológicas que las fuerzas de seguridad podrían utilizar para monitorear e identificar personas en una protesta en Argentina. Encontrarás en esta guía explicaciones de cómo las tecnologías de vigilancia están siendo utilizadas para vigilar las protestas, y cómo puedes protegerte de las mismas.
Puedes descargar la guía desde esta página, de la sección más abajo titulada "Attachments".
This guide was…
Content type: Advocacy
In line with WHO's commitment to a human rights-based approach to health, Privacy International believes the following elements procedural and substantive elements must be included:
Open, inclusive and multi-stakeholder process
The drafting and negotiation process of this international instrument must allow for the meaningful participation of a wide range of civil society organisations (CSOs) and reflect the commitment from the WHO and Member States to receive and respond to CSOs…
Content type: News & Analysis
The UK government has acknowledged that section 8(4) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (“RIPA”) (which has since been repealed) violated Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In relation to Article 10, it specifically acknowledged that the way in which security agencies handled confidential journalistic material violated fundamental rights protected by Article 10.
As part of a friendly settlement with two applicants, the UK government acknowledged…
Content type: Explainer
Bluetooth
The majority of apps settled on using Bluetooth for proximity tracing.
Just what is Bluetooth?
Named after the 10th Century King Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson who unified Scandinavia — and whose runic initials comprise the logo — Bluetooth is a wireless, low-power, and therefore short-distance, set of protocols used primarily to connect devices directly to each other in order to transfer data, such as video and audio.
Bluetooth for tracking?
Most of us who've encountered Bluetooth use…
Content type: Video
Links
Edin mentioned 'a journalist and her son' being targeted; their names are Carmen and Emilio Aristegui. You can find out more about people targeted in Mexico
Keep up to date with ongoing litigation against NSO Group around the globe
Read our report, together with Amnesty International and SOMO, on NSO Group's corporate structure
Find more examples of harm involving NSO group
As revelations about the abuses of NSO Group's spyware continue, we took a look at what…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the midst of the atrocious war currently being waged by Russia on Ukraine, on 14 March 2022 Reuters reported that Clearview AI, the infamous online surveillance company, had offered its services to the Ukrainian defense ministry. A day later in an interview for TechCrunch, Ukraine's vice prime minister and minister for Digital Transformation confirmed that the partnership with Clearview AI was "currently in very early development".
Clearview is an online surveillance company that collects…
Content type: Explainer
Introduction/Background
Electronic tags have been a key part of criminal justice offender management for over 20 years, being used in the United States since the mid 1980’s and in the UK and some other commonwealth countries since 2003. In 2021 the UK introduced GPS tagging for immigration bail.
The tag is predominantly used to curtail the liberties of individuals. For those on criminal bail its intended use includes managing return into communities while deterring reoffending.
As we explore…
Content type: Long Read
In a roundtable available on YouTube, co-hosted with Garden Court Chambers, Privacy International brought together immigration law practitioners to discuss how they’ve used privacy and data protection law to seek information or redress for their clients.
Index:
1. UK Border 2025
2. Super-complaint and judicial review challenge to data sharing
3. Mobile phone seizure and extraction
4. Freedom of Information Act requests
The dystopian future: UK Border 2025
To set the scene on how the…
Content type: Advocacy
We wrote to the Home Office as part of our campaign ‘STOP SPYING ON ASYLUM SEEKERS’, opposing the draconian surveillance of asylum seekers taking place through the Aspen Card.
We asked detailed questions about how data collected from Aspen Card usage is used to monitor asylum seekers, and how the Home Office are alerted to any ‘breach of conditions’ of the card.
In their reply, the Home Office told us that:
“The Home Office can be alerted to a breach of conditions by several internal and…
Content type: News & Analysis
In a ruling handed down on 14 October 2021 by the High Court of Kenya in relation to an application filed by Katiba Institute calling for a halt to the rollout of the Huduma card in the absence of a data impact assessment, the Kenyan High Court found that the Data Protection Act applied retrospectively.
Background to the case
Huduma Namba as initially proposed
In January 2019, the Kenyan Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendment) Act No. 18 of 2018 came into effect, introducing a raft of amendments…
Content type: News & Analysis
2022 will see a raft of high tech surveillance tools emerging in the UK government’s arsenal, which will further entrench a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants. Compounding this further, immigration officers will increasingly be using digital forensic tools such as 'mobile phone extraction' under a veil of secrecy. This raises serious concerns about overreach, misuse and abuse of power, the actual quality and integrity of the data they gather, and independent oversight of these powers. But it…
Content type: Long Read
This piece is a part of a collection of research that demonstrates how data-intensive systems that are built to deliver reproductive and maternal healthcare are not adequately prioritising equality and privacy.
What are they?
Short Message Services (SMS) are being used in mobile health (MHealth) initiatives which aim to deliver crucial information to expecting and new mothers. These initiatives are being implemented in developing countries experiencing a large percentage of maternal and…
Content type: News & Analysis
The notorious Clearview AI first rose to prominence in January 2020, following a New York Times report. Put simply, Clearview AI is a facial recognition company that uses an “automated image scraper”, a tool that searches the web and collects any images that it detects as containing human faces. All these faces are then run through its proprietary facial recognition software, to build a gigantic biometrics database.
What this means is that without your knowledge, your face could be stored…
Content type: Explainer
Following sustained reporting by researchers, journalists and activists around the world, including recent disclosures exposed by the PegasusProject, the surveillance industry is facing scrutiny like never before.
In the latest move, eighteen U.S. lawmakers have today demanded that the U.S. government imposes sanctions on four non-US surveillance companies for, as they mention in their letter, facilitating “disappearance, torture and murder of human rights activists and journalists”.
The move…
Content type: Video
Update: Pa has since won a settlement from UberPlease note the views expressed in the video are interviewee's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of PI.Pa used to work for Uber. After some time, Uber started asking him to submit a picture of himself to the platform to confirm it was indeed him who had completed the job. However, with time, the frequency of the requests increased. In the beginning, the requests for a picture only happened once a week, but as time went by Pa told us that…
Content type: News & Analysis
To add your voice to the letter below, which we'll be sending to gig economy companies like Uber, Deliveroo, Bolt, Amazon Flex, Just Eat, Free Now, and Ola, sign the Managed by Bots petition. (PETITION IS NOW CLOSED, SEE UBER'S RESPONSE TO OUR CAMPAIGN LETTER. SEE DELIVEROO'S RESPONSE.
Worker Info Exchange (WIE), the App Drivers and Couriers Union (ADCU), Privacy International (PI) and other civil society organisations* are today writing to you with urgent questions about the exploitation of…
Content type: Long Read
What if your boss was an algorithm? What would you do if your employer suddenly fired you or reduced your pay without telling you why? And without being willing to give you a reason when you ask for one?
This is not science fiction or some far-fetched reality. Millions of people worldwide are working in the gig economy sector for companies like Uber, Deliveroo, Bolt, Just Eat… And this could be the future of work for people working outside the gig economy, as surveillance technologies are…
Content type: Video
Please note the views expressed in the video are the interviewee's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of PI.
Driver X (he wishes to remain anonymous) has been working for Uber for five years. After working for Uber for two and half years, he suddenly received a message telling him that his account had been temporarily suspended and asking him not to call Uber while the investigation was pending. He was baffled, as he had an excellent record and rating, with plenty of positive…
Content type: Video
Please note the views expressed in the video are the interviewee's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of PI.
In his interview, Alexandru told us that he started to work for Uber in 2018. Despite being aware of negative experiences of others, he felt that everything was running smoothly, and for a while, Uber met his expectations.
However, in 2021, he received a notice from Uber that they had noticed fraudulent activity associated with his account. He went on social media and…
Content type: News & Analysis
What if we told you that every photo of you, your family, and your friends posted on your social media or even your blog could be copied and saved indefinitely in a database with billions of images of other people, by a company you've never heard of? And what if we told you that this mass surveillance database was pitched to law enforcement and private companies across the world?
This is more or less the business model and aspiration of Clearview AI, a company that only received worldwide…
Content type: Video
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Links
Read more about the ICO's provisional decision
Support our work
You can find out more about Clearview by listening to our podcast: The end of privacy? The spread of facial recognition
Content type: Press release
In what could be seen as one of the strongest sanctions against the company in Europe, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which is tasked with enforcing data protection legislation in the UK, has today announced its provisional intent to issue a potential fine of £17 million against the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI.
Clearview AI, which only received worldwide attention following a New York Times report back in January 2020, is a company whose business model…
Content type: Long Read
At Privacy International, we challenge companies and governments who infringe on our privacy and facilitate, as well, violations of other human rights.
Our most recent challenge is against Clearview AI, a company that trawls the internet to save photos of our faces to form part of their biometric database to sell. We have filed complaints alongside 3 other organisations with regulators in the UK, France, Italy, Austria and Greece. Our goal is a clear message that there is no place in society…
Content type: Long Read
Zimbabwe has a history of state led surveillance that is carried out more for political gain than for the investigation of legitimate criminal activities. During former President Mugabe’s 37 year rule the government used laws and state security structures to carry out targeted surveillance of persons of political interest and more generalised mass surveillance of the population.
Specific laws such as the Interception of Communications Act as well as mandatory SIM-card registration regulations…
Content type: Long Read
In a previous article, we mapped the influence of the Chinese company Huawei across the world and how their sales of smart city infrastructures are contributing to the reshaping of our public space.
We should be alarmed by some of their product deployments – such as the installation of facial recognition technologies in countries with concerning human rights records. But also the deployments of facial recognition technology in countries without strong data protection laws are as such…
Content type: Long Read
The smart city market is booming. And with a booming market comes companies that are profiting and reshaping our public space, like the Chinese tech company Huawei.
While the term ‘Smart City’ is a broad one that encompasses many different initiatives, some with little to no impact on our privacy and other rights. Certain issues are nevertheless recurrent: the lack of transparency around public-private partnerships, the absence of consultation, and the appetite for a “tech quick fix…
Content type: Long Read
For over 20 years with the start of the first use of ICTs in the 1990s, we have seen a digital revolution in the health sector. The Covid-19 pandemic significantly accelerated the digitalisation of the health sector, and it illustrates how fast this uptake can be and what opportunities can emerge; but also, importantly, the risks that it involves.
As we've said many times before, whilst technologies can be part of the solution to tackle some socio-economic and political challenges facing our…
Content type: Advocacy
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has developed draft privacy guidance for police agencies' use of FRT, with a view to ensuring any use of FRT "complies with the law, minimizes privacy risks, and respects privacy rights". The Commissioner is undergoing consultation in relation to this guidance.
Privacy International and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association ("CCLA") welcome the Commissioner's efforts to strengthen the framework around police use of facial recognition, and the…