Recent News

Long Read

Digital health, big tech and your privacy

Introduction Harnessing new digital technology to improve people’s health is now commonplace across the world. Countries and international organisations alike are devising digital health strategies and looking to emerging technology to help solve tricky problems within healthcare. At the same time

Long Read

Image of smart phone with smokescreen and fingerprint icon lit up in blue.

Non-fitted devices in the Home Office’s surveillance arsenal: Investigating the technology behind GPS fingerprint scanners

Expanding beyond GPS ankle tags, the Home Office has since Autumn 2022 been issuing so-called non-fitted devices (NFDs) to migrants who are on immigration bail and who are subject to electronic monitoring conditions. We undertook some technical research into NFDs to investigate the intrusiveness of this surveillance technology.

Long Read

The rise of the Surveillance Databases

Surveillance databases are on the rise all around us and with them comes a wider array of issues. Here we begin to unpack these concerns and discuss some of the prominent global drivers of this trend.

Long Read

Protecting personal data during elections – the Council of Europe's new guidelines on the processing of personal data for the purposes of voter registration and authentication

in June 2024 the Council of Europe adopted its Guidelines on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data for the purposes of voter registration and authentication. PI welcomes these very comprehensive Guidelines which complement a previous set of recommendations outlining the safeguards for the Processing of Personal Data by and for Political Campaigns.

News & Analysis

Automating the hostile environment: uncovering a secretive Home Office algorithm at the heart of immigration decision-making

“IPIC” ("Identify and Prioritise Immigration Cases”) is an algorithm utilised by the UK Home Office that automatically identifies and recommends migrants for particular immigration decisions or enforcement action. After a year of submitting Freedom of Information Act requests, we finally received some information on this secretive AI tool used to decide the fate of migrants.

Key Resources

A black and white sign showing the words Polling Station and a left pointing arrow

Election Technology in Kenya

Electoral processes - along with elections themselves - are one of the largest government data-gathering exercises undertaken outside of censuses (periodic governmental counts of a country's population). This makes electoral processes ripe for data exploitation and abusing the privacy of individual electors.

News & Analysis

Sign saying "Polling station" with green-blue gradient over the top

Our new tech explainer on election technologies in Kenya

We’ve published a new tech explainer on election technologies in Kenya. The explainer takes a deep dive into the technologies employed to manage and administer the election process in Kenya, such as biometric voter registration (BVR), voter identification, results transmission, and candidate

Advocacy

Elections Technology - Our Recommendations #1: General Recommendations, BVR, EVID and Results Transmission

When it comes to elections around the world, we find ourselves in a terrain that is more and more populated by digital technologies, which have an increasingly critical impact upon the realisation of democracy. Digital technologies used in the context of elections offer new opportunities to support

Explainer

Election Technology in Kenya

Key Resources

Examples of algorithmic management abuses

Companies are increasingly tracking their workers and deploying unaccountable algorithms to make major employment decisions over which workers have little or no control or understanding. While gig economy workers, content creators and warehouse operatives are at the sharp end of the algorithmic black-box, opaque and intrusive surveillance practices are embedding themselves across many industries and workplaces.

Long Read

Decoding vertical tech integrations: why do they matter?

From the Amazon rainforests to subsaharan Africa, tech companies seek to expand their dominance by investing in connectivity infrastructure. While this has certainly brought some benefits, it also raises concerns about big tech's expansion into new territories.

Long Read

European and African continents with spider webs

“When Spiders Share Webs”: Unveiling privacy threats of EU-funded INTERPOL policing programme in West Africa

An insight to our briefing “When Spiders Share Webs” that explores the role the EU-funded INTERPOL programme, the West African Police Information System (WAPIS), in externalising EU borders by transferring interoperable data-driven policing capabilities to West African nations.

Report

PI Briefing, When Spiders Share Webs, Cover Page Screenshot

When Spiders Share Webs: The creeping expansion of INTERPOL’s interoperable policing and biometrics entrench externalised EU borders in West Africa

Our briefing “When Spiders Share Webs” explores the role the EU-funded INTERPOL programme, the West African Police Information System (WAPIS), in externalising EU borders by transferring data-driven policing capabilities to West African nations.

Long Read

Your NEW guide to surveillance human rights standards is here

A glimpse into what you can find in the new version of PI’s Guide to International Law and Surveillance. From surveillance of public spaces to spyware and encryption, it’s got everything!

Key Resources

A cartoon woman overlaid with text that reads Preconceived, documentary screening. Panel discussion on the implications of tech and surveillance on privacy and reproductive rights

Privacy International will be hosting a screening of 'Preconceived'

To coincide with International Safe Abortion Day, Privacy International will be hosting a screening of 'Preconceived', a documentary which looks at the rise of crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in the United States, and follows how two women when seeking abortion care were led to CPCs.

Report

PI’s Guide to International Law and Surveillance

PI’s Guide to International Law and Surveillance providing the most hard-hitting results that reinforce and strengthen the core principles and standards of international law on surveillance.

Key Resources

Terms of Reference: Developing a microsite for recommendations for algorithmic transparency

Privacy International (PI) has been working on how best to protect workers subjected to algorithmic decision making in their workplace. As part of this work, it is now finalising a set of recommendations for gig economy platforms to help them improve their employee's working conditions.

Advocacy

Privacy International's response to ILO questionnaire on realizing decent work in the platform economy

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is developing a new legal standard to support decent work in the platform economy. Privacy International has submitted its views on the risks to the privacy, autonomy and decency of workers posed by the use of automated decision-making. This is with the aim of informing the forthcoming discussion on the standard at the 2025 and 2026 International Labour Conferences.

Explainer

Uniform grid of endless rows of desk cubicles with laptops and monitors

Humans in the AI loop: the data labelers behind some of the most powerful LLMs' training datasets

Who are the workers behind the training datasets powering the biggest LLMs on the market? In this explainer, we delve into data labeling as part of the AI supply chain, the labourers behind this data labeling, and how this exploitative labour ecosystem functions, aided by algorithms and larger systemic governance issues that exploit microworkers in the gig economy.

Explainer

Large language models and data protection

This explainer takes a look at the main ways in which large language models (LLMs) threaten your privacy and data protection rights.

Long Read

Close up image of text on Monoply board game

What is the Digital Markets Act and what does it mean for our privacy and wider rights?

The European Union’s ‘Digital Markets Act’ came into force on the 7 March 2024. The law aims to make the EU’s markets in the digital sector fairer and more contestable by imposing restrictions on designated ‘gatekeepers’ in an attempt to empower competitors and reinstate the rights of users.

Advocacy

Photo of UN Geneva headquarters with flags.

PI delivers oral intervention to UN Committee on the impact of the use of data & tech on the rights of persons with disabilities.

On 11 August 2024, PI delivered an oral statement during the 31st Session of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the impact of the use of data & tech on the rights of persons with disabilities.

Advocacy

An overbroad, unbalanced and dangerous UN cybercrime treaty must be rejected

As negotiations of a UN treaty against cybercrime are coming to a close, Privacy International is concerned that, in its current, almost final form, the draft treaty poses significant risks to both human rights and the security of digital communications.

The Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes is concluding its final negotiating session at UN headquarters in New York City, after over two years of negotiations which exposed deep divisions among states.

Advocacy

Facial recognition camera scanning a shoppers face in supermarket

Joint letter to UK retailers regarding the potenital use of facial recognition technology (FRT) within their stores

Privacy International co-signed a letter, alongside UK civil society organisations campaigning against the use of FRT in the UK, calling on retailers to refrain from the use of FRT in their stores.

Advocacy

Close up of individual's face with fingerprint replacing facial features

Joint letters to the Information Commissioner and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police on use of PimEyes

Privacy International, alongside a coalition of UK based NGOs campaigning against facial recognition technology (FRT), co-signed a letter to the Information Commissioner and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service (the Met), regarding a report exposing the Met's use of PimEyes, a facial recognition search engine.

Long Read

Social media monitoring in the UK: the invisible surveillance tool increasingly deployed by government

Privacy International presents how the use of social media monitoring by governments and companies is an increasingly prevalent one, and as this article explores, largely unregulated.

Long Read

Digital Health: what does it mean for your rights and freedoms

Governments have been digitising their health systems and, more broadly, healthcare. We dive into the right to health situated in the digital context, exploring the digital health initiatives that put patients' data and freedoms at risk.

Advocacy

Privacy International submits expert witness testimony in Haki Na Sheria's case challenging Maisha Namba, Kenya’s new digital ID system

In June 2024, PI filed expert witness testimony before the court to assist the adjudication of the case.

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The End of Privacy in Public

We’re facing the end of privacy in public, because of the unchecked rise of facial recognition

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