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Content type: Report
First published in 2017, PI’s Guide to International Law and Surveillance is an attempt to collate relevant excerpts from these judgments and reports into a single principled guide that will be regularly updated. This is the fourth edition of the Guide. It has been updated it to reflect the most relevant legal developments until March 2024.The Guide aspires to be a handy reference tool for anyone engaging in campaigning, advocacy, and scholarly research, on these issues. The fourth…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International joined civil society efforts to call the South African Parliament not to approve the draft General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill 2023 (GILAB), which was approved by the Cabinet and introduced in Parliament.
The Bill was proposed by the South African government, after the Constitutional Court found the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act of 2002 (RICA) unconstitutional on multiple grounds.
The draft Bill fails to meet the human rights standards on many…
Content type: News & Analysis
After almost 20 years of presence of the Allied Forces in Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement in February 2020 on the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. A few weeks before the final US troops were due to leave Afghanistan, the Taliban had already taken control of various main cities. They took over the capital, Kabul, on 15 August 2021, and on the same day the President of Afghanistan left the country.
As seen before with regime…
Content type: Long Read
Additionally, in January 2020 Privacy International and UK-based NGO Liberty filed a new claim against MI5 and the Secretary of State for the Home Department in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (the “Ungoverned Spaces Case”, this time, the case sought to hold MI5 and the SSHD accountable for systemic, long-term failures in the way they handle and retain millions of people’s personal data. As part of this claim, PI requested that the IPT re-opens parts of the original BPD/BCD. This aspect of…
Content type: News & Analysis
What happened
On 22 July 2021, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) issued a declaration on our challenge to the UK bulk communications regime finding that section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 (since repealed by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016) was incompatible with EU law human rights standards. The result of the judgment is that a decade’s worth of secret data capture has been held to be unlawful. The unlawfulness would have remained a secret but for PI’s work.
You…
Content type: Long Read
The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK government’s historical mass interception program violates the rights to privacy and freedom of expression. The Court held that the program “did not contain sufficient “end-to-end” safeguards to provide adequate and effective guarantees against arbitrariness and the risk of abuse.” As a result the Court ruled that UK law "did not meet the “quality of law” requirement and was therefore incapable of keeping the “…
Content type: Report
Privacy International has released a report summarising the result of its research into the databases and surveillance tools used by authorities across the UK’s borders, immigration, and citizenship system.
The report uses procurement, contractual, and other open-source data and aims to inform the work of civil society organisations and increase understanding of a vast yet highly opaque system upon which millions of people rely.
It also describes and maps…
Content type: Case Study
The prohibition against torture is absolute. There are no exceptional circumstances whatsoever which can be used to justify torture.
And yet, torture is still being carried out by state officials around the world, driven by states’ ability to surveil dissidents, and intercept their communications.
In 2007, French technology firm Amesys (a subsidiary of Bull) supplied sophisticated communications surveillance systems to the Libyan intelligence services. The systems allegedly permitted the…
Content type: Long Read
Imagine that every time you want to attend a march, religious event, political meeting, protest, or public rally, you must share deeply personal information with police and intelligence agencies, even when they have no reason to suspect you of wrongdoing.
First, you need to go to the police to register; have your photo taken for a biometric database; share the contacts of your family, friends, and colleagues; disclose your finances, health records, lifestyle choices, relationship status, and…
Content type: Long Read
A major new report published today by Privacy International has identified alarming weaknesses in the oversight arrangements that are supposed to govern the sharing of intelligence between state intelligence agencies.
'Secret Global Surveillance Networks: Intelligence Sharing Between Governments and the Need for Safeguards' is based on an international collaborative investigation carried out by 40 NGOs in 42 countries.
Previously undisclosed documents obtained by PI via litigation in the…
Content type: Report
‘Secret Global Surveillance Networks’ is a major PI report, based on an unprecedented international collaborative investigation carried out by 40 NGOs in 42 countries.
Our research shows that, globally, the sharing of intelligence is alarmingly under-regulated, opening the door to human rights abuses. Intelligence sharing has evolved dramatically with the rise of new surveillance technologies, enabling governments to collect, store, and share vast troves of personal information, including data…
Content type: News & Analysis
This piece was written by PI Research Officer Edin Omanovic and originally appeared here.
Whatever happens over the next few years, if there is to be a storm, then it is best to prepare. It is essential that western liberal democratic societies are resilient enough to uphold their fundamental values.
One of the UK’s biggest security assets is one of its biggest security threats. The UK’s spies have access to and are allowed to exercise some of the most sophisticated electronic…
Content type: Long Read
This week, Privacy International, together with nine other international human rights NGOs, filed submissions with the European Court of Human Rights. Our case challenges the UK government’s bulk interception of internet traffic transiting fiber optic cables landing in the UK and its access to information similarly intercepted in bulk by the US government, which were revealed by the Snowden disclosures. To accompany our filing, we have produced two infographics to illustrate the…
Content type: News & Analysis
According to Snowden documents analysed by Privacy International, the Australian Signals Directorate had access to and used PRISM, a secret US National Security Agency program which provides access to user data held by Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
This is the third spy agency of the 'Five Eyes' alliance confirmed to have had secret access to Silicon Valley company data - an alliance whose rules and policies remain classified. Earlier this year, a British court ruled that GCHQ access to…
Content type: Press release
British intelligence services acted unlawfully in accessing millions of people’s personal communications collected by the NSA, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled today. The decision marks the first time that the Tribunal, the only UK court empowered to oversee GHCQ, MI5 and MI6, has ever ruled against the intelligence and security services in its 15 year history.
The Tribunal declared that intelligence sharing between the United States and the…
Content type: News & Analysis
The following is an excerpt from an Op-Ed written in the New Zealand Herald by Privacy International's Legal Officer Anna Crowe:
Since the release of documents by Edward Snowden nearly a year ago, New Zealand has often been seen as a passive participant in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, not unlike a good kid hanging out with the wrong crowd.
However, Snowden documents released last month and the news that New Zealand appears to be sharing intelligence…
Content type: Press release
The United Nations General Assembly should approve a new resolution and make clear that indiscriminate surveillance is never consistent with the right to privacy, five human rights organizations said in a November 21, 2013 letter to members of the United Nations General Assembly.
After heated negotiations, the draft resolution on digital privacy initiated by Brazil and Germany emerged on November 21 relatively undamaged, despite efforts by the …