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Content Type: Advocacy
The entire election cycle is increasingly data dependent. This is particularly the case with political campaigns which are ever more digital and data driven. This campaign environment presents novel challenges due to the scale and range of data available together with the multiplicity, complexity and speed of profiling and targeting techniques. All of this is characterised by its opacity and lack of accountability. Existing legal frameworks designed to curtail this exploitation often also fall…
Content Type: Video
Immediately following the UK general election in December 2019, we worked with Open Rights Group to commission a YouGov poll about public understanding and public opinion about the use of data-driven campaigning in elections.
The poll used a representative sample of 1,664 adults across the UK population.
'Data-driven political campaigning' is about using specific data about you to target specific messages at you. So, for this might involve knowing that you are, for example, likely to…
Content Type: Advocacy
In order to ensure free and fair elections, it is essential that there be safeguards and protections applied to prevent the exploitation of personal data. It is important that those with responsibilities for protecting our data be transparent in order to ensure that there are effective safeguards in place, and civil society plays an important role in holding them accountable.
At Privacy International we developed the attached questions to help obtain information from bodies/authorities…
Content Type: News & Analysis
On New Year's Day, the Twitter account @HindsightFiles began publishing internal communications and documents from the now defunct SCL Group, dating from 2014-2018. They came from the hard drive of Brittany Kaiser, who held several senior positions at SCL Group including at one of its subsidiaries, Cambridge Analytica, and featured in the Netflix documentary "The Great Hack".
Privacy International first investigated Cambridge Analytica in 2017. We questioned the company's role in the Kenyan…
Content Type: News & Analysis
In the run up to the UK General Election on 12 December 2019, Privacy International, joined by other organisations called on political parties to come clean about their use of data. The lack of response to these demands combined with other evidence gathered by groups during the run up to the election demonstrates that current regulations are not fit for the digital era.
This briefing to which Privacy International contributed together with Demos, the Computational Propaganda Project at the…
Content Type: Advocacy
In October 2019, PI responded to the UK Information Commissioner’s (ICO) consultation on a draft Code of Practice for the use of personal data in political campaigning.
This follows on from PI's submission in December 2018, to the ICO’s Call for Views.
PI welcomes the draft Code of Practice as a first step. However, much remains to be done to close the implementation and enforcement gap and strengthen existing regulatory frameworks.
In response to the ICO’s questions, PI’s submission…
Content Type: Advocacy
PI is increasingly concerned that democratic participation can be inhibited by novel and unhindered surveillance both by governments and companies. To safeguard our rights, earlier this year, we launched our work programme, Defending Democracy and Dissent, which aims to investigate the role technology plays in facilitating and/or hindering everyone's participation in civic society.
This submission to the House of Lords covers PI’s views on:
How digital tech has changed the way…
Content Type: Advocacy
On 28 August 2019 PI joined International Privacy Network partner Asociación por los Derechos Civiles and others in writing to the Directors of Public Policy for Latin America at Facebook, Google, and Twitter. The letters outline what steps are needed to make the social media giants' ad archives effective. Earlier this year organisations across Europe, led by the Mozilla, wrote to the companies with similar guidelines - the letters sent today say that equivalent steps should be taken for ad…
Content Type: Advocacy
Dear Chair and Committee colleagues,
Privacy International is an international NGO, based in London, which works with partners around the world to challenge state and corporate surveillance and data exploitation. As part of our work, we have a dedicated programme “Defending Democracy and Dissent” where we advocate for limits on data exploitation throughout the electoral cycle.
We have been closely following the important work of the Committee. Prompted by the additional evidence provided…
Content Type: Advocacy
On 26 July 2019, Privacy International sent the attached written evidence submission to the UK All Parliamentary Party Group on Electoral Campaigning Transparency.
In the UK, All-Party Groups (APPGs) are informal groups of Members of both the House of Commons and House of Lords with a common interest in particular issues.
Content Type: Advocacy
As an organisation that has been fighting to protect people's data and privacy since the 1990s, we were left speechless by your redemption of Cambridge Analytica’s former staff ("What Cambridge Analytica’s ex-staff can teach us about data defence”, Gillan Tett, July 24, 2019).
How can we prevent a repeat of the Cambridge Analytica scandal?, Tett asks, yet fails to even mention the core solution that is universally proposed by privacy professionals around the world: comprehensive…
Content Type: Advocacy
Consultation Submission
In March 2019, Privacy International submitted a response to a consultation on Disinformation in Electoral Contexts, led by the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights together with the Department of Electoral Cooperation and Observation (DECO) and the Department of International Law (DIL) of the Organisation of American States (OAS).
In our submission we highlighted the importance of minmising data…
Content Type: Advocacy
In December 2018, PI responded to the UK Information Commissioner's (ICO) Call for Views on a Code of Practice for the use of personal information in political campaigns.
The consultation followed on from the ICO's policy report Democracy Disrupted?, published in July 2018, which recommended that the Government should legislate at the earliest opportunity to introduce a statutory Code of Practice under the Data Protection Act 2018 for the use of personal information in campaigns.…
Content Type: Advocacy
UPDATE 13 February: Facebook announced that it would open up its Ad Archive API next month. Read Mozilla's statement about the response here.
On 11 February 2019, Privacy International joined Mozilla and 36 organisations in an open letter to Facebook call on Facebook to make good on its commitments to provide more transparency around political advertising ahead of the 2019 EU Parliamentary Elections.
Specifically, our open letter urges Facebook to:
Roll out a functional, open Ad…