Technology Pill Podcast

Today we're launching our Data Interception Environment for everyone to use. We've used it to research everything from low cost phones, to menstruation apps, and now we’re making it available so that you can do your own research on how your apps use your data.

This week we talk to Daniel Magson, who has been campaigning to stop diet ad companies from targeting people with eating disorders, and Eva Blum-Dumontet, who wrote PI's recent report on the data collected by diet companies.

This week we talk to Juan Diego from Fundación Karisma - one of our  partners based in Colombia - about the use of technology in the response to the Covid pandemic and their report "Useless and Dangerous: A Critical Exploration of Covid Applications and Their Human Rights Impacts in Colombia".

This week we talk to Massimo Marelli, Head of the Data Protection Office at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to discuss the use of data by humanitarian organisations in light of the serious concerns around data left behind in the US's withdrawal from Afghanistan and the risks presented by humanitarian agencies' increasing collection and use of data. 

This week we take a look at travel during the pandemic - we chat to staff about where they've been, what it was like, and most importantly: how they got there.

This week we come back from our break to chat to PI staff about what we've been reading or plan to read this summer.

This week we’re talking to Andreea Belu - Campaigns and Communications Manager at EDRi - about evading facial recognition. We talk about our European Citizen's Iniative to ban facial recognition and how hard it is to guarantee that tools built to allow people to evade facial recognition will actually work. 

This week we speak to Pallavi Bedi, Senior Policy Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society in India, about the technology being used in India to co-ordinate vaccine distribution and the response to the pandemic.

This week we discuss our experience of Covid so far, where we've been, where we are, and where we're going.

This week we talk to Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights & Counter-Terrorism, Nina Dewi Toft Djanegara about biometrics in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Keren Weitzberg about uses in Somalia and Palestine.

This week we’re passing the podcast over to Edward Snowden. We found out this week that the judgement in our case at the European Court of Human Rights - challenging the UK’s mass surveillance programme of bulk interception, and the UK’s access to information gathered via bulk surveillance by the USA - is coming very soon, on the 25 May.

On Tuesday, we said goodbye to Yahoo Answers in the appropriate spirit - by answering questions from the Computers and Internet section of Yahoo.

This week we talk about the different kinds of facial recognition and which you might see where. We also chat about the Facebook leak of 553million records.

This week we bring you an episode from last year in which we talked to PI's Tech Co-ordination Groups to bring you tips and tricks about how to start cleaning up and securing your phone or computer.

Please note - WhatsApp does now offer disappearing messages!

This week we're looking at the ways in which the UK Department of Work and Pensions surveil benefit recipients.

This week we're joined by Dr Courtney Thompson to discuss the history of phrenology and physiognomy and their relationship to modern technologies and culture.