News and Analysis

May Day serves as a timely reminder that across their history, intelligence services have targeted trade unions and other organisations working for progressive social change. Intelligence agencies have sought to justify expanded surveillance capabilities on the basis of pressing national security

NETMundial – a global conference initiated by the Brazilian government – has produced ‘The Multi-stakeholder Statement of São Paulo’, a Roadmap and Principles on internet governance that could herald new respect for the right to privacy online. However, the outcome document fails to adequately

This year, an advanced surveillance system called the "Platform for Unified Monitoring and Analysis" will come online in Colombia. Frustrated with the the previous system, Esperanza, which only monitored telecommunications activity, the Colombian authorities turned to PUMA (Plataforma Única de

UPDATE: The Kosovar minister of European integration – Vlora Citaku – announced in a tweet on April 29th that the government has approved the law on the interception of telecommunications. The draft law will now be reviewed by the parliament. _________________________________________________________

The government of Pakistan is proposing a new law that significantly threatens privacy rights, in a blatant attempt to establish a legal regime containing broad powers when it comes to obtaining, retaining, and sharing data obtained through criminal investigations, including communications data. The

Global problems require global solutions. One of the significant emerging threats to human rights and democracy today is the incredible and mostly unaccountable spread of surveillance technologies. The rapid proliferation of these systems has created a shadowy billion-dollar industry, where

In response to a consultation being undertaken by the UN in accordance with December’s General Assembly resolution on the right to privacy in the digital age, Privacy International today called on the United Nations to recognise that mass surveillance is incompatible with human rights. The

Surveillance companies selling mass and intrusive spy technologies to human rights-abusing governments often are benefitting from the financial and institutional support from their home government, revealing a more closely-linked relationship between the sector and the State than previously believed

The market for surveillance technologies has expanded so much in recent years that oversight has been totally unable to keep up, which has led to devastating consequences in the lives of human rights defenders in repressive regimes around the world. According to a new study released today by Privacy

For some time, many in the privacy and security community hoped for a completely open-source mobile phone, one that would allow for code to be examined and strengthened to prevent malicious attacks to a user's privacy. So when Canonical, the company that primarily funds Ubuntu GNU/Linux, announced

In the late eighteenth century in Germany, ‘anthropologist’ Johann Blumenbach published a degenerative hypothesis that linked cranium and facial profiles to supposed character traits and accordingly divided human beings into five different races: the Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, and

Facing intense scrutiny from a Swiss government inquiry into the human rights impact of the commercial surveillance trade, companies have packed up and are no longer attempting to export their spying technology from Switzerland. Speaking with St. Galler Tagblatt, one of Switzerland’s largest German

Only a few days after it was reported that intrusive surveillance technology developed and sold by Italian surveillance company Hacking Team was found in some of the most repressive countries in the world, Privacy International has uncovered evidence which suggests the company has received over €1

The 'GSOC saga' began a number of weeks ago with the revelation that the oversight body of the Irish police force, the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC), may have been the target of sophisticated electronic surveillance. A security company, Verrimus, found that there was evidence that an