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Content type: News & Analysis
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill is currently being scrutinised by numerous civil society organisations such as Amnesty International UK and Liberty for its damaging impacts on peaceful protests, however it also contains important provisions regarding when, if and how the police and other governmental authorities can extract data from your phones and other electronic devices.
Chapter 3 of the PCSC Bill is a legislative response to the UK's Information Commissioner's Office…
Content type: Examples
On March 17th, the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) approved a bill allowing the digital tracking of people arriving from abroad and who would have to go into quarantine. Travellers will be tracked using digital tracking bracelets, or other means like cell phone bracelet. According to Haaretz, Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch said 5,000 digital bracelets will be available for use the same week, and that 30,000 more will be acquired over the next three months.
Content type: News & Analysis
We have set out our understanding of the NFI’s current functioning here.
The National Fraud Initiative is a data-matching exercise overseen by the Cabinet Office which allows a range of public and private sector entities to access personal data, exclusively for the purposes of preventing and detecting fraud. A current government consultation suggests expanding the NFI to include four new, wide-ranging purposes:
Data-matching to assist in the prevention and detection of crime (other than…
Content type: Explainer
You can access PI’s response to the consultation here.
This explainer is based on PI’s analysis and understanding of:
The Consultation text
The Draft Code of Data Matching Practice
The Cabinet Office’s data specifications for the public and private sector
The Cabinet Office’s 2015 case-studies both for the public and private sector
The Data Protection Impact Assessment for the current iteration of the National Fraud…
Content type: Advocacy
As part of a package of measures aimed at addressing the challenges posed by big tech companies, the European Commission proposed a Digital Markets Act, whose intended aim is “to allow end users and business users alike to reap the full benefits of the platform economy and the digital economy at large, in a contestable and fair environment.”
The proposal contains provisions that could benefit individuals as they engage with services provided by big tech companies ('gatekeepers' in the language…
Content type: News & Analysis
Unwanted Witness’ research into Safeboda highlighted the company’s failure to comply with some of the law's core data protection principles, with a number of implications for the exercise of data subject rights. The enforcement action against Safeboda by National Information Technology Authority, Uganda (NITA-U) requires the company to make fundamental changes to how they handle people's personal data in order to comply with the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019.
This first landmark…
Content type: News & Analysis
The College of Policing public consultation concerned the new Code of Practice in relation to the way information is managed and recorded in the Police National Computer (PNC), Police National Database (PND) and the forthcoming Law Enforcement Data Service (LEDS).
PI and Open Rights Group (ORG) believe that the way police records and information are managed, stored and disposed of can pose serious threats to privacy and other fundamental rights. Therefore they must not only be subject to strong…
Content type: Video
Links
Find more of Dr Thompson's work and her book 'An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America'
Or you can find her on twitter
You can see the 'Good and Bad heads' picture in her article 'Rediscovering “Good” and “Bad” Heads in the Phrenological Present'
Find out more about Physogs and Photofit in Courtney's article in Endeavour
You can listen to our podcast on Facial Recognition
And you can support us
You can listen and subscribe to…
Content type: Advocacy
Background
Giphy is a searchable database for Graphic Interchange Format (‘GIF’) files, stickers, emojis, text, videos and Arcade (remixable video games). This database can be queried through the Giphy search engine, either via its main website (giphy.com), its API or its SDK. Content obtained can then be shared via their URL or be integrated in another service such as a website or an app. Well known integrations of Giphy include messaging services like Whatsapp, Slack,…
Content type: Examples
On 2 March 2021, the Ministry of Health of Uganda unveiled its plan to immunize millions against COVID-19 starting on 10 March 2021.
The statement made by the Ministry of Health noted that "All persons eligible for vaccination will be required to provide a National Identification Card in the case of Ugandan citizens or a passport in the case of non-Ugandans".
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asc5mQe0-3I
Publication: NTV News
Content type: Examples
Health officials in Lebanon had indicated that all residents in Lebanon there would be equal access to the Covid-19 vaccine programme, regardless of nationality. However data is indicating a higher number of Syrian and Palestinian refugees either not registering or receiving the vaccine, and so a low percentage of these groups are being vaccinated compared to rates of Lebanese nationals.
Human Rights Watch reported that this low numbers signalled “a lack of awareness around the process and a…
Content type: People
TRUSTEE/ Ahana has held various cybersecurity leadership roles in the public and private sectors. She has previously written about privacy and cyber risk related issues, and currently researches global governance issues in the field at the University College London.
Content type: Examples
Tom Hurd, a senior Home Office counter-terrorism official who was at Eton and Oxford with prime minister Boris Johnson, will lead the UK’s newly-established biosecurity centre; Hurd remains a candidate to take over as the next director general of MI6 later in 2020. Hurd, who has worked as a diplomat at the UN and in security, has no obvious scientific background. Independent experts believe the emphasis on security is misplaced, and that monitoring the status of coronavirus via local and…
Content type: Examples
In mid-May two people living in or adjacent to the world’s largest refugee settlement, the Rohingya camps in southern Bangladesh, tested positive for COVID-19, leading aid workers to fear catastrophic effects on both the Rohingya themselves and Bangladesh in general. By the end of May another 132 cases had been reported at the wider district level in Cox’s Bazaar. Social distancing is impossible in the camps, which house 900,000 refugees in dense conditions, many without running water.
https…
Content type: Examples
A New Zealand Subway restaurant suspended an employee for sending texts and social media requests on Facebook, Instagram, among others to a female customer online after she gave the restaurant her personal information as part of a contact tracing effort. The restaurant has since adopted a new digital contact tracing system that keeps details private unless requested by government officials for contact tracing purposes.
https://www.newsweek.com/restaurant-worker-suspended-after-using-customers…
Content type: Examples
In the spring of 2020 the Trump administration pushed FEMA to award more than $760 million in contracts, bypassing the usual bidding process. The largest of these was a White House-ordered March $96 million no-bid contract to AirBoss of America for 100,000 powered respirators and filters for medical workers treating patients in New York for delivery in July. More than a quarter of the federal government’s more than 2,000 orders worth nearly $2.5 billion were signed without competitive bidding…
Content type: Examples
The UK Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government hired the AI firm Faculty, which had previously been contracted by prime ministerial special advisor Dominic Cummings to work for the Vote Leave campaign and which lists two current and former Conservative ministers among its shareholders, to monitor and analyse social media “to understand public perception and emerging issues of concern to HMG arising from the COVID-19 crisis”. Faculty was paid £400,000 for the work. The contract…
Content type: Examples
In May 2020, the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care hired McKinsey to help define the “vision, purpose, and narrative” of a permanent organisation to manage test and trace programmes. The new National Institute for Health Protection will be led by Baroness Dido Harding. McKinsey was paid £563,400 for several weeks of work. The contract did not give McKinsey access to users’ personal data; however, the consulting firm will own all concepts, tools, databases, and other outputs it has…
Content type: Examples
As a condition of returning campus, all 1,500 students at Michigan’s Albion College were required to download and install a contact tracing app called Aura, which was developed by Pennsylvania-based Nucleus Careers and tracks students’ real time locations 24/7 with no opt-out. collects and stores location data to determine whether a student has come into contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus. Students are also not allowed to leave campus without permission, and can be…
Content type: Examples
As Europeans went back to work and social spaces in early summer 2020, they discovered that these had been newly equipped with a variety of technologies that brought surveillance with them as the price of preventing a resurgence of the coronavirus. Among the tools being adopted: a Romware Covid Radius bracelet, which beeps whenever two workers get too close to each other; laser technology to ensure social distancing in shopping malls; mask detection technology, facial recognition to ensure…
Content type: Examples
Florida law graduates are reporting that they have encountered significant data breaches, including attempted hacks on bank accounts, as a result of using software from Missouri-based ILG Technologies that they were required to download in order to take the bar exam virtually, a necessity because of the pandemic. The online test was later cancelled, but since then would-be test takers have reported attempts originating from Russia to access sensitive accounts and, in a few cases, having their…
Content type: Examples
Standard PCR tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people in the US who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of virus, and may not be contagious. Rather than skipping testing people without symptoms, as the US CDC has suggested, the solution may be to use less sensitive, though less accurate, rapid tests, which could be performed more frequently and find people when they’re most infectious. However, additional help might lie in including in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus…
Content type: Examples
Cambridge Assessment, which operates one of the UK’s three big examination boards that administer most GCSE and A-level qualifications, says it approached ministers and the Department of Education two weeks before the publication of both sets of exam results to warn there were major problems in the way grades were being allocated. The exam regulator, Ofqual, responded that its enhanced appeal process would be sufficient to handle the few cases it expected would arise. In the event, serious…
Content type: Examples
The California bill AB2004 would direct the state to set up a blockchain-based system for immunity passports that would empower the California Department of Consumer Affairs to authorise health care providers to issue verifiable health credentials that could be used to grant or deny access to public places. The bill is scant on detail such as how long a credential should be valid, how it should be updated, or how it can be revoked following exposure. The use of phones for these credentials…
Content type: Examples
Revenues accruing to the touchless payment company Zwipe more than doubled in the first half of 2020, partly due to reduced operating expenses, and partly due to the pandemic-fueled rise of secure contactless payment technologies.
https://findbiometrics.com/covid-19-game-changer-biometric-payment-cards-zwipe-h1-update-082701/
Writer: Alex Perala
Publication: Find Biometrics
Content type: Examples
Numerous US colleges are forcing students to download location-tracking apps or wear symptom-tracking devices, many of them similar to tracking systems student athletes are often required to install on their phones. Tracking athletes did little to help them gain either an education or a professional career and backfired when they bypassed the system to reclaim some privacy. Tracking the student body at large is likely to follow suit, with dangerous consequences for public health. In addition,…
Content type: Examples
After discovering that the online platform for virtual learning Edgenuity uses an algorithm to grade tests comprising short-answer question, students and their parents have learned to game the system by writing extra sentences and adding a list of keywords that the algorithm is likely to be scanning for. Edgenuity offers more than 300 online classes for secondary school students that include instruction videos, virtual assignments - and tests and exams. Others have discovered that simply…
Content type: Examples
The English regulator, the Care Quality Commission, and its Scottish equivalent, the Care Inspectorate, refused to disclose, in response to FOI requests, the COVID-19 death tolls in individual care homes in part to protect providers’ commercial interest and avoid undermining the UK’s care system, which relies on private operators. The regulators do share data on an individual home basis with their governments. Research has found that coronavirus outbreaks were up to 20 times more likely in…
Content type: Examples
Students arriving for the fall semester at the University of Arizona were required on arrival to take a rapid COVID-19 test. Those testing negative could proceed to move into their dorms and begin campus life; those testing positive were required to spend ten days in a special isolation dorm and take classes online. The university also set up wastewater sampling to provide an early warning system to detect emerging hot spots. The system enabled the university to detect and isolate two cases…