News and Analysis

N&A, Long Reads, Press Release

Press release
A 400 gigabyte trove of internal documents belonging to surveillance company Hacking Team has been released online. Hacking team sells intrusive hacking tools that have allegedly been used by some of the most repressive regimes in the world. The documents reportedly confirm Hacking Team has
Press release
A joint statement from international and domestic civil society organisations expresses continued serious concerns regarding the passage of Pakistan’s Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill. Privacy International, ARTICLE 19, Human Rights Watch, Association for Progressive Communications, Digital
News & Analysis
The relationship between users and companies is based primarily on trust. However, many recent developments have the potential to undermine this trust and to question companies loyalties to their users. From excessive data collection and transmission to the failure to guard against basic security
Press release
Privacy International is deeply disturbed by the Moroccan government’s crackdown on media, human rights defenders, and civi society. Our friend Hisham Almiraat will be appearing in court on Thursday November 19th, 2015 along with six other journalists and human rights defenders members, and is
Long Read
Written by Eva Blum-Dumontet A recent case of lèse-majesté in Thailand (speaking ill of the monarchy) is a worrying example of how Western companies do not just work with governments that fall short of international human rights standards, but can actually facilitate abuses of human rights. Our
News & Analysis
The UK Government introduced a draft surveillance bill on Wednesday – the innocuously named 'Investigatory Powers Bill'. Trumpeted as 'world leading' by the Home Secretary, the only sense in which this is true is that other Governments around the world will now also seek a mandate for mass
Press release
Privacy International has today written to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the secret court that hears complaints about the UK's surveillance regime, to demand that the Government comes clean about when and how it began collecting bulk communications data in the UK, and just as importantly
News & Analysis
On legal reform "RIPA, obscure since its inception, has been patched up so many times as to make it incomprehensible to all but a tiny band of initiates. A multitude of alternative powers, some of them without statutory safeguards, confuse the picture further. This state of affairs is undemocratic
News & Analysis
With powers to snoop on our communications that are unprecedented anywhere in the world, it is essential the Investigatory Powers Bill doesn't let politicians decide who is spied on. The bill, if it is passed, aims to give the police and intelligence agencies sweeping powers to scoop up our emails
News & Analysis
This is a guest piece. It does not necessarily reflect the views or position of Privacy International. In 1997, plans for a Civil Identification Registry (RIC) were signed into law in Brazil, promising to unify the 27 regional identification registries into a centralized federal one by 2020. The law
News & Analysis
Despite Wednesday's publication of the Investigatory Powers Bill being trailed as world leading legislation that would balance security and privacy, what the Government is actually seeking is a mandate for mass surveillance. This is a new Snoopers' Charter and we must oppose many of its most
Press release
Privacy International said "The true debate on surveillance can begin today. After years of downplaying, obscuring, and denying the Snowden revelations, the Government has finally entered the conversation. For the first time Parliament and the British public will be able to debate mass surveillance
News & Analysis
Photo: Flickr/Elvert Barnes. Some rights reserved. In the wider civil society space, the opportunities for travel come thick and fast. From the multi-stakeholder perspective, the Internet Governance Forum will be held during November in João Pessoa, Brazil. There is the Stockholm Internet Forum in
Press release
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni directed intelligence and police officials to use a powerful, invasive malware to spy on domestic political opponents – including parliamentarians, activists and media houses – following the 2011 presidential election, during a period of urban unrest and police
News & Analysis
According to Snowden documents analysed by Privacy International, the Australian Signals Directorate had access to and used PRISM, a secret US National Security Agency program which provides access to user data held by Google, Facebook and Microsoft. This is the third spy agency of the 'Five Eyes'
Long Read
We hate to say we told you so. Privacy International has for years warned that powerful surveillance technologies are used to facilitate serious human rights abuses with insufficient technological and legal safeguards against abuse. We now have the most solid evidence to date that we were right. Our