News and Analysis

The European Parliament's resolution on artificial intelligence in criminal law and its use by the police presents an opportunity for the EU to reconsider its role in the development of such tools, their sale, or use as part of its counter-terrorism and anti-immigration policies abroad.

Companies like Instagram want to understand who we are. But their extensive and invasive data collection is having devastating consequences.

Over the last 20 years, vast data-intensive systems were deployed in Afghanistan by national and foreign actors. As we highlight some of these systems we present our concerns as to what will happen to them.

Apple has announced that it will start scanning photos in the US to improve child safety, but their plans will ultimately endanger everyone.

The UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal issued a declaration in our challenge to the bulk communications data regime, finding UK legislation to be incompatible with EU law. 

The World Health Organisation tasked Privacy International with reviewing their guidance on Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health. Here is our analysis of the final report.

Legislation to require government-issued ID to vote in England, Scotland and Wales will lead to discrimination and exclusion.

The controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Bill (‘Policing Bill’) includes provisions for ‘extraction of information from electronic devices’ by immigration officers. The provisions to seize and extract rely solely on ‘voluntary provision’ of devices and ‘agreement’ to extract data.

We are concerned immigration officers not only lack requisite skills, the power imbalance between state and migrant calls into question whether provision of a device can ever be truly voluntary.

This proposal comes at a time when there is a total lack of transparency around Home Office use of mobile phone extraction.

The controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Bill includes provisions for 'extraction of information from electronic devices'. It relies solely on voluntary provision and agreement. We analyse the power imbalance between the State and individual - which calls into question 'voluntary provision' and 'agreement' as a basis for seizure of a device and extraction of data. 

Read our new ‘Free to Protest’ guides and learn about the high tech surveillance tools that enable the police to identify, monitor and track protestors, indiscriminately and at scale - and find out how you can better protect yourself.