News and Analysis

N&A, Long Reads, Press Release

Press release

PI joins 20+ organisations to ask European data protection authorities to investigate whether companies are acting in accordance with GDPR

Photo credit: Forbrukerrådet The Norwegian Consumer Council has today published a report which shows how Facebook and Google appear to push users into sharing personal data, and raises questions around how such practices are GDPR compliant. Off the back of the analysis, Privacy International is

Press release

Privacy International, Liberty, and Open Rights Group joined other organisations across the EU to file complaints over Member States’ non-compliance with mass surveillance rulings

Privacy International, Liberty, and Open Rights Group have joined over 60 NGOs, community groups, and academics across the European Union to file complaints to the European Commission. The complaints call for the EU governments to stop requiring companies to store all communications data. The

News & Analysis

Access to US cell phone location data now requires a warrant

Privacy International welcomes today’s decision by the United States Supreme Court in Carpenter v. United States, which finds that the government must generally obtain a warrant when seeking mobile phone location records. In particular, PI applauds the Court’s recognition that “[m]apping a cell

Long Read

Thomson Reuters Selling ICE Access to Data

Updated - Thomson Reuters Selling US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Access to Data

Update 28 June 2018 Last week Privacy International wrote to Thomson Reuters Corporation asking the company to commit to ensuring the vast amounts of data they provide to US immigration agencies isn’t used to identify families for indefinite detention or separation, or for other human rights abuses

Press release

Press release: Privacy International asks Thomson Reuters if it will stop facilitating the US government’s “zero tolerance” policy

Privacy International (PI) has today sent an open letter to the President of Thomson Reuters Corporation asking whether he will commit to ensuring the multinational company’s products or services are not used to enforce cruel, arbitrary, and disproportionate measures, including those currently being

News & Analysis

The NPCC is no Longer Open to Public Scrutiny - the Government Must Fix this Loophole Immediately

In order to uphold the law and keep us safe, the police can seriously interfere with a range of fundamental human rights. And so transparency and public scrutiny of their actions are essential to protect against misconduct and abuse. So why is the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) now permitted

Press release

Privacy International calls on the United States government to uphold its international human rights obligations

Gus Hosein, Executive Director of Privacy International: The US federal government's cruel zero tolerance immigration policy has received widespread and international condemnation. In addition to the policy's clear moral failure it is also in violation of the government's legal obligations under the

News & Analysis

Op-ed - Users have demanded better online privacy and security

This piece originally appeared here. The tech industry is ramping up its attack and promulgation of myths around the ePrivacy regulation, as shown by Julia Apostle’s op-ed “ We survived GDPR, but now another EU privacy law looms” (June 14). Let’s set the record straight. Myth #1: the ePrivacy

News & Analysis

UK Data Protection Act 2018 – 339 pages still falls short on human rights protection

While the worlds’ attention, the world’s humour, including a dedicated playlist of 89 songs on Spotify, were on the coming into force of EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on 25th May, the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018) that received Royal Assent only two days previously had

News & Analysis

Protecting the digital beneficiary

This piece originally appeared here. We are much more than our physical selves. We are also digital. Every moment we generate more data. Although sometimes this data is under our control, increasingly it is not. This uncontrolled data—this metadata—is often generated as a result of our interactions

Press release

Letter to Gareth Southgate and Faraday cage

PI Sends Anti-Surveillance Kit to Gareth Southgate to Stop Rival Managers spying on England tactics

Privacy International (PI) has today urged England Manager Gareth Southgate to bolster his defence ahead of the World Cup in Russia, which kicks off next Thursday. PI sent Southgate an anti-surveillance 'Faraday cage' phone pouch and a briefing on his vulnerability to potential spying by rival

Press release

Press statement: Privacy International thanks Edward Snowden for his courageous actions five years ago today

On the five year anniversary of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden leaking a massive trove of classified information that has since transformed our understanding of government mass surveillance, Dr Gus Hosein, Executive Director of Privacy International said: “Is it enough for your government to tell

News & Analysis

Between Scylla and Charybdis – the fate of the e-privacy regulation

We found the image here. As the hype around the EU General Data Protection Regulation’s entry into force begins to die down, confidentiality of digital communications in Europe is facing a new challenge. On one side, companies are lobbying to prevent the finalisation of the proposal for a new e

Long Read

Depiction of an earth globe with data around

Why and how GDPR applies to companies globally

The European Union's new data privacy law (General Data Protection Regulation, better known as GDPR) takes effect today May 25th, 2018, after a two-year transition period. Despite some companies appearing to believe otherwise, and many articles misrepresenting its contents, the GDPR will have a

Long Read

How do data companies get our data?

We found the image here. Open a Russian Matryoshka doll and you will find a smaller doll inside. Ask a large data company such as Acxiom and Oracle where they get their data from, and the answer will be from smaller data companies. Data companies – a catch all term for data brokers, advertisers

Press release

Privacy International launches campaign to investigate range of data companies that facilitate mass data exploitation

On the day that GDPR comes into force, PI has launched a campaign investigating a range of data companies that make up a largely hidden data ecosystem. This hidden data ecosystem is comprised of thousands of non-consumer facing data companies - such as Acxiom, Criteo, Quantcast - that amass and