News and Analysis

“It’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife”. Alanis Morissette thought that was ironic. I never thought so. I suggest a far more ironic lyric to you Alanis - "It’s like the Home Office not listening during a consultation about how it wants to listen to everything you do’. OK, it might not

Over the next two weeks, the 25th session of the Universal Period Review Working Group will take place in Geneva. The Universal Period Review is a key mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council to remind UN Member States of their responsibility to respect and implement all human rights and fundamental

This guest piece was written by Jane Duncan of the Right2Know Campaign. It does not necessarily reflect the views or position of Privacy International. On 23rd March the United Nations Human Rights Committee released its assessment on South Africa’s compliance with the International Covenant on

This week the Mexican Supreme Court will issue its judgement on the country’s data retention. It will decide on an injunction against the provisions of the the Federal Telecommunications Act known as the ‘Ley Telecom’. The Act requires all telephone companies and internet service providers to retain

Macedonia's capital Skopje is bracing itself for another night of protests and clashes after the interim President announced on Tuesday that there will be an amnesty for everyone under investigation in a formal probe into illegal wiretapping. The investigation into the wiretapping scandal, which was

Image source This is a guest post by Zoë Blackler . If you want to know how the UK came to be the most watched nation in the world, with CCTV on every corner, you need to go back to 1942: the now ubiquitous policing aid was first developed for use in missile testing by the German military. Tear gas

Should the European Union agree to legitimise trade with a country that refuses to adhere to European legal standards? This is the fundamental question that will be addressed at tomorrow’s meeting among European privacy regulators when they publish their opinion on the data-sharing agreement known

Section 217 and the Draft Code of Practice on Interception of Communications Tech giants including Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Google Inc, Microsoft Corp, Twitter Inc and Yahoo Inc have been openly critical of the UK Government’s Investigatory Power Bill (IPBill). However, what has not been highlighted

PI's full analysis can be read here On 29 February 2016, the European Commission and the US government released the details of the proposed EU-U.S. “Privacy Shield”. The “Privacy Shield” replaces the now defunct so-called “Safe Harbor”. The Privacy Shield is in fact a significant number of documents

We already know that in some countries, like the UK, governments are drafting laws to legalise and legitimise their incredible surveillance powers. In the U.S. we are seeing legislation that is using remarkably similar language on encryption and surveillance. The next phase of the cryptowars has

Hacking Team, an Italian surveillance company selling intrusive spyware to government authorities around the world, has had its global export license revoked by the Italian export authorities, according to a report in Il Fatto Quotidiano. The move comes after intensive media scrutiny spurred by the