Surveillance Industry

News & Analysis

An agent during his guard duty out of the police border post of Makalondi, at the border between Niger and Burkina Faso. Ph. by Francesco Bellina

Europe’s Shady Funds to Border Forces in the Sahel

Photo by Francesco Bellina The wars on terror and migration have seen international funders sponsoring numerous border control missions across the Sahel region of Africa. Many of these rely on funds supposed to be reserved for development aid and lack vital transparency safeguards. In the first of a

Long Read

The EU Funds Surveillance Around the World: Here's What Must be Done About it

Photo: Francesco Bellina Driven by the need to never again allow organised mass murder of the type inflicted during the Second World War, the European Union has brought its citizens unprecedented levels of peace underpinned by fundamental rights and freedoms. It plays an instrumental role in

News & Analysis

Here’s the Surveillance the US Exports to Central America as Aid - And it’s Surviving Trump’s Cuts

Picture Credit: US AID US President Trump has been cutting aid to Central America, including a surprise cut of approximately $500m in aid to the “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, apparently as punishment for “doing absolutely nothing” to prevent emigration to the

Saudi Arabian government-backed Absher app lets men monitor and control women’s travel

06 May 2019

Absher, an online platform and mobile phone app created by the Saudi Arabian government, can allow men to restrict women’s ability to travel, live in Saudi Arabia, or access government services. This app, which is available in the Google and Apple app stores, supports and enables the discriminatory

Long Read

Have a Biometric ID System Coming Your Way? Key Questions to Ask and the Arguments to Make

Photo By: Cpl. Joel Abshier ‘Biometrics’ describes the physiological and behavioural characteristics of individuals. This could be fingerprints, voice, face, retina and iris patterns, hand geometry, gait or DNA profiles. Because biometric data is particularly sensitive and revealing of individual’s

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Surveillance Company Cellebrite Finds a New Exploit: Spying on Asylum Seekers

Cellebrite, a surveillance firm marketing itself as the “global leader in digital intelligence”, is marketing its digital extraction devices at a new target: authorities interrogating people seeking asylum. Israel-based Cellebrite, a subsidiary of Japan’s Sun Corporation, markets forensic tools

Long Read

An Open Source Guide to Researching Surveillance Transfers

Privacy International’s new report shows how countries with powerful security agencies are training, equipping, and directly financing foreign surveillance agencies. Driven by advances in technology, increased surveillance is both powered by and empowering rising authoritarianism globally, as well

Long Read

Aerostats, Biometrics, Chips, and Drones: UK Gathers Surveillance Industry to Solve Brexit Border Question

Image: Eric Jones The UK government last week hosted hundreds of surveillance companies as it continues to try and identify “technology-based solutions” able to reconcile the need for controls at the Irish border with the need to avoid them. The annual showcase conference of 'Security and Policing'

Explainer

The Global Surveillance Industry

What is the Global Surveillance Industry? Today, a global industry consisting of hundreds of companies develops and sells surveillance technology to government agencies around the world. Together, these companies sell a wide range of systems used to identify, track, and monitor individuals and their

News & Analysis

Exploiting Privacy: Surveillance Companies Pushing Zero-Day Exploits

Private surveillance companies selling some of the most intrusive surveillance systems available today are in the business of purchasing security vulnerabilities of widely-used software, and bundling it together with their own intrusion products to provide their customers unprecedented access to a

Case Study

Uncovering Big Brother Inc

What happened

As we traveled the world we saw alarming use and spread of surveillance capabilities. From country to country we saw the same policy ideas, and the same kit. The role of industry to the growth of surveillance capability had never been exposed before.

What we did

In 1996 we published

News & Analysis

Privacy International launches the Surveillance Industry Index & New Accompanying Report

Privacy International launches the Surveillance Industry Index & New Accompanying Report Privacy International is today proud to release the Surveillance Industry Index (SII), the world's largest publicly available educational resource of data and documents of its kind on the surveillance industry

Advocacy

Joint Submission on the Right to Privacy in Italy, Human Rights Committee, 119th Session

Privacy International and the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties' Joint Submission in Consideration of the Sixth Periodic Report of Italy Human Rights Committee 119th Session (6-29 March 2017). The submission brings to the attention of the Committee the ongoing concern with Italian security

Press release

Privacy International’s initial reaction to EU export control proposal

PI Research Officer Edin Omanovic said: “The European Commission has proposed sweeping updates [PDF] to trade regulations in an effort to modernise the EU’s export control system and to ensure that the trade in surveillance technology does not facilitate human rights abuses or internal repression

Long Read

Monitoring the Surveillance Industry: Using data to protect privacy

Often when asked to discuss open data and privacy the objective is to successfully navigate the tension between the fundamental right to privacy, and the virtues of open data. And there is a tension. It is rare to see increased collection of data alongside greater privacy protections. The recently

Advocacy

Denmark Approves Export Of Internet Surveillance System To China

Privacy International has today written to Danish ministers and authorities seeking urgent assurances following a report published two days ago in Information showing that the government has approved the export of an internet surveillance system to China. The report, which relies in part on