News and Analysis

N&A, Long Reads, Press Release

Long Read

Alexa, stop being creepy! Our letter to Jeff Bezos

Last week, an investigation by Bloomberg revealed that thousands of Amazon employees around the world are listening in on Amazon Echo users. As we have been explaining across media, we believe that by using default settings and vague privacy policies which allow Amazon employees to listen in on the

News & Analysis

Anatomy of an AI system: a map of the many processes — extracting material resources, data, and human labor — that make an Amazon Echo work. Credit: Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler

The mystery of the Amazon Echo data

Image: Anatomy of an AI system: a map of the many processes — extracting material resources, data, and human labor — that make an Amazon Echo work. Credit: Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler With over 6.3 million Amazon Echo devices worldwide, there is a good chance these constantly active devices will

News & Analysis

Communities at risk: How encroaching surveillance is putting a squeeze on activists

Protest movements throughout history have helped to shape the world we know today. From the suffragettes to the civil rights movement, and to contemporary movements such as those focusing on LGBTIQ+ rights, protests have become a vital way for many, who feel powerless otherwise, to have their voices

News & Analysis

New faith in privacy regulation? We need proof of conversion

Mr. Zuckerberg has discovered the usefulness of regulation to protect our personal data. After years of lobbying against the adoption of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and of lamenting the ills of its implementation, Facebook seems ready to embrace European data protection law and

News & Analysis

Communities at risk: How security fails are endangering the LBGTIQ+ community

Earlier this month, Brunei attracted international condemnation for a new law that will make gay sex punishable by death . While this is clearly abhorrent, Brunei is not the only country with explicit anti-gay laws. Homosexuality is criminalised in over 70 countries around the world. And even in

News & Analysis

Communities at risk: How governments are using tech to target migrants

According to the International Organization for Migration, an estimated 258 million people are international migrants – that is, someone who changes their country of usual residence, That’s one in every 30 people on earth. These unprecedented movements levels show no sign of slowing down. It is

Long Read

Your local police force might already be able to hack you

(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).

Long Read

Project Hunter: The UK Programme Exporting its Border Abroad

The UK border authority is using money ring-fenced for aid to train, finance, and provide equipment to foreign border control agencies in a bid to “export the border” to countries around the world. Under the UK Border Force’s “Project Hunter”, the agency works with foreign security authorities to

News & Analysis

Why am I seeing this?! PI asks 7 more companies..

PI has today written to Google, Instagram, Snapchat, TicTok, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp to ask for more information about their steps to tell people why they are seeing ads. Facebook recently announced expanding the company's ad transparency measures to include more information about why an ad

Long Read

Surveillance Company Cellebrite Finds a New Exploit: Spying on Asylum Seekers

Cellebrite, a surveillance firm marketing itself as the “global leader in digital intelligence”, is marketing its digital extraction devices at a new target: authorities interrogating people seeking asylum. Israel-based Cellebrite, a subsidiary of Japan’s Sun Corporation, markets forensic tools

News & Analysis

Grindr and US national security: why it is time we start caring for the privacy of all users

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is trying to force the Chinese owner of the gay dating app Grindr to sell the app because of national security concerns. This is the first time the committee has considered the national security implications of a foreign social media

News & Analysis

Civil society achieves change, but risks still remain in Kenya's new biometric ID system

Today, the Kenyan Government is starting their biometric registration exercise known as NIIMS, leading to the issuing of Huduma Namba ID numbers. Along with our colleagues and partners in the human rights community in Kenya, we are very worried about the ramifications of this system for people in

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Are you serious Mr Zuckerberg?

This past weekend, in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg called for new regulations to address harmful content, electoral integrity, privacy and data portability. Nine years since he proclaimed that privacy is no longer a social norm, four years since Facebook noticed broadscale

Long Read

Your local police force could download everything from your phone without your consent

(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).

News & Analysis

Planning and participating in a protest could get you under surveillance: three technologies you should know about

Planning and participating in peaceful protests against governments or non-state actors’ policies and practices requires the capacity of individuals to communicate confidentially without unlawful interference. Surveillance technologies are affecting the right to peaceful assembly in new and often unregulated ways: in this article we focus on three technologies and practices deployed by public authorities in monitoring assemblies that raise particular concerns: IMSI catchers, facial recognition, and Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT).

Long Read

How predictive policing technology can lead to discrimination and profiling

(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).