Advanced Search
Content Type: Long Read
Privacy and security are both essential to protecting individuals, including their autonomy and dignity. Undermining privacy undermines the security of individuals, their devices and the broader infrastructure. People need privacy to freely secure themselves, their information, and fully enjoy other rights. However, a growing number of governments around the world are embracing hacking to facilitate their surveillance activities.
As a form of government surveillance, hacking presents…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Privacy International welcomes the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Catt v the United Kingdom.The Court found that the UK violated the right to privacy (Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights) of Mr John Catt, a peace movement activist, who despite having never being convicted of any offence, had his name and other personal data included in a police database known as the “Extremism Database”. The Court found problematic "the variety of definitions of…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Federal law enforcement is deploying powerful computer hacking tools to conduct domestic criminal and immigration investigations.
By Alex Betschen, Student Attorney, Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic, University at Buffalo School of Law
Hacking by the government raises grave privacy concerns, creating surveillance possibilities that were previously the stuff of science fiction. It also poses a security risk, because hacking takes advantage of unpatched vulnerabilities in our…
Content Type: Press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 21, 2018
CONTACTS:
Alex Betschen, Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic, [email protected], 716–531–6649
Colton Kells, Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic, [email protected], 585–766–5119
Abdullah Hasan, ACLU, [email protected], 646–905–8879
NEW YORK — Privacy International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic of the University at Buffalo School of Law filed a lawsuit today…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This piece was originally published on Just Security.
Ten years ago, an FBI official impersonated an Associated Press reporter to lure and track a teenager suspected of sending in prank bomb threats to his school. To find him, the FBI agent, posing as a reporter, sent the teenager links to a supposed story he was working on, but the links were infested with malware that once clicked on quickly exposed the teen’s location. More recently, the FBI has seized and modified websites so…
Content Type: Long Read
This piece was orignally published in Slate in February 2017
In 2015, the FBI obtained a warrant to hack the devices of every visitor to a child pornography website. On the basis of this single warrant, the FBI ultimately hacked more than 8,700 computers, resulting in a wave of federal prosecutions. The vast majority of these devices—over 83 percent—were located outside the United States, in more than 100 different countries. Now, we are in the midst of the first cases…
Content Type: Long Read
This piece originally appeared here.
On both sides of the Atlantic, we are witnessing the dramatic expansion of government hacking powers. In the United States, a proposed amendment to Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure would permit the government to obtain a warrant, in certain circumstances, to hack unspecified numbers of electronic devices anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, across the pond, the British Parliament is currently debating the Investigatory…
Content Type: Long Read
The recent back and forth between Apple and the FBI over security measures in place to prevent unauthorised access to data has highlighted the gulf in understanding of security between technologists and law enforcement. Modern debates around security do not just involve the state and the individual, the private sector plays a very real role too. There are worrying implications for the safety and security of our devices. Today, a new company stepped in to this discussion -- though it had been…
Content Type: Press release
Privacy International and Human Rights Watch have submitted a briefing to a US court, arguing that compelling Apple to build new software for the FBI will be a dangerous game changer in the security of the technology we rely on every day. If the FBI wins its case against Apple, it will open the floodgates for governments across the world to make similar demands. Compelling technology companies to weaken the security of their products and services …
Content Type: News & Analysis
On Tuesday (16th February 2016) Apple posted a message to their customers stating that the company had been ordered by the FBI to “make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation.” Apple are currently opposing this order. A fascinating debate is currently playing out in the media about whether Apple should comply with or resist the FBI's demands.
Whatever…