News and Analysis

N&A, Long Reads, Press Release

News & Analysis

APEC Cross Border Privacy Rules System Awaits Final Component

Nigel Waters attended the APEC DPS meeting in Jakarta as an invited guest. He has previously either formally represented Privacy International or been a part of the Australian delegation. He continues to bring a critical civil society perspective to bear on the APEC privacy work. The APEC Cross

News & Analysis

Lawful interception: the Russian approach

In order to lawfully conduct communications surveillance (“lawful interception”) in the U.S. and Western Europe, a law enforcement agency must seek authorisation from a court and produce an order to a network operator or internet service provider, which is then obliged to intercept and then to

News & Analysis

A paucity of privacy: Humanitarian, development organisations need beneficiary data protection policies

The drive for accountability in aid spending has put humanitarian and development agencies under pressure to collect an ever-growing amount of data about those who receive their assistance. Donors also increasingly demand that new technologies are deployed to ensure aid reaches those it is targeted

News & Analysis

PI in Slate: "Privacy for the Other 5 Billion"

Below is an excerpt of an article that recently appeared on Slate, written by our partner Kevin Donovon, a researcher at the University of Cape Town, and Carly Nyst, Head of International Advocacy at Privacy International: "Move over, mobile phones. There’s a new technological fix for poverty

News & Analysis

European Parliament Committees Threaten Wholesale Destruction Of Privacy And Data Protection Rights

Just over a year ago, vitally important reforms to European privacy and data protection laws were proposed. Now these reforms, which will affect the rights of half a billion Europeans, are being watered down in their passage through various European parliamentary committees as MEPs succumb to an

Press release

Amazon and eBay lobbyists found to be writing EU data protection law in copy-paste legislation scandal

A European privacy group claimed today that dozens of amendments to the new Data Protection Regulation being proposed by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are being copied word-for-word from corporate lobby papers, with MEPs frequently failing to even remember their own amendments. Max

Press release

Privacy International calls on HMRC to investigate Gamma International’s potential breach of UK export laws

Privacy International has called upon HM Revenue & Customs to investigate potentially illegal exports by the British company Gamma International, which has been exporting surveillance products without a license to repressive regimes with dismal human rights records. On Friday 9th November, Privacy

Press release

Human rights organisations file formal complaints against surveillance firms Gamma International and Trovicor with British and German governments

Privacy International, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Bahrain Watch and Reporters without Borders filed formal complaints with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the UK and Germany against two

Long Read

OECD complaint: Gamma International exporting surveillance technology to Bahrain

On 1st February 2013 Privacy International, together with the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Bahrain Watch and Reporters without Borders, filed complaints with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) against

Long Read

OECD complaint: Trovicor exporting surveillance technology to Bahrain

On 1st February 2013, Privacy International, together with the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Bahrain Watch and Reporters without Borders, filed complaints with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) against

News & Analysis

The Brussels Privacy Declaration

Today is Data Privacy Day, which commemorates the 1981 signing of the Coucil of Europe's Convention 108, the first legally binding international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection. It is celebrated all over Europe, as well as in Canada and the United States since 2008. To mark the

News & Analysis

On International Data Privacy Day - who is reading your emails?

On International Data Privacy Day, it is important that we all ask ourselves: who has access to our personal information? Who can find out where we’ve been and who we’ve called, who can read our emails and our text messages? Who can find which websites we access and which files we download

News & Analysis

Have you seen your digital footprint lately?

We are the raw material of the new economy. Data about all of us is being prospected for, mined, refined and traded...and most of us don’t even know about it. Every time we go online, we add to a personal digital footprint that’s interconnected across multiple service providers, and enrich massive

Press release

Google Transparency Report for second half of 2012 shows European government attempts to access private data at an all-time high

Google's latest Transparency Report, released at 3pm GMT this afternoon, shows that requests by European governments for the browsing history, email communications, documents and IP addresses of Google's users have skyrocketed since the Transparency Report was launched three years ago. Countries in

News & Analysis

Bull quietly offloads controversial surveillance technology after Libya revelations

The social news website MiroirSocial.com confirmed yesterday that the prominent French technology firm Bull SA has sold its controversial mass surveillance "Eagle" system to Stéphane Salies, one of its chief designers and an ex-director of Bull. The surveillance software was previously manufactured

Press release

British government welcomes Foreign Affairs Committee recommendation to control exports of surveillance and censorship technology

In his response to the third report from the Foreign Affairs Committee Session 2012-13, Foreign Secretary William Hague expressed for the first time the government's firm commitment to putting in place new export controls on "telecommunications equipment for which there is a reasonable expectation