Àwọn Twíìtì Privacy International

BREAKING: Nearly 4 years after our complaint and 2 after starting their investigation, the French data protection authority CNIL finds breaches in Criteo's activities, and proposes a fine of €60 million. Why did this happen and why does it matter? 👇

Our complaints against Acxiom, Criteo, Equifax, Experian, Oracle, Quantcast, Tapad

Today, Privacy International has filed complaints against seven data brokers (Acxiom, Oracle), ad-tech companies (Criteo, Quantcast, Tapad), and credit referencing agencies (Equifax, Experian) with...

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How to protect your digital privacy when seeking abortion care

Experts

and

share tips on compartmentalizing your online activity, limiting your phone's tracking abilities etc. “The importance that people place on their data—which should have always been high—should now be a priority." -

@lauralazc

publicgoodnews.com

Experts warn that personal data on digital devices and online platforms could be used as incriminating evidence in abortion-related legal cases.

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Searches for “How to monitor employees working from home” increased 1,705% in April 2020 compared to 2019. Employers didn’t have to look far for the answer, as Microsoft Office 365 suite had everything to monitor employees at home. Read our research: pvcy.org/WFH

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Did you know that #RoevWade was a privacy ruling? Read our comparative analysis of the evolution of the right to privacy in light of the US Supreme Court's most controversial rulings of recent times.

Privacy and the Body: Privacy International’s response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s attack on...

The relationship between privacy and access to abortion care In 1973, in the state of Texas, it was a criminal offence to “procure or attempt” an abortion except if the purpos

Ògún 11

New podcast on digital maternal health and family planning in the Middle East

@alexandrinepdec

spoke to

@nourelarnaout

from

@ghiaub

and Yousef Khader from

@EMPHNET

about gender, power and risks Listen on our website or wherever you get your podcasts 👂

Maternal Health and Family Planning in the Middle East: Gender and Power

7amleh حملة

@7amleh

Ògún 7

In connection with the recent escalation on the ground, the targeting of Palestinian content on social networks is intensifying! 🔹If you are facing any violations while posting about Palestine, report now to 7or via: 7or.7amleh.org/ar/

COVID-19: Social protection responses were opaque, lacked privacy

Ògún 11

The Covid-19 pandemic pushed governments to quickly provide emergency welfare benefits for their populations. While in good faith, some of these efforts didn't adequately prioritise equality, transparency, and privacy. Read our op-ed 👇

cms.trust.org

Many social protection programmes lacked basic human rights considerations, from inception to implementation, leaving the most vulnerable excluded

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Here’s how a well-connected security company is quietly building mass biometric databases in West Africa with EU aid funds:

Here’s how a well-connected security company is quietly building mass biometric databases in West...

The “EU Trust Fund for Stability and Addressing Root Causes of Irregular Migration and Displaced Persons in Africa” (EUTF for Africa) isn’t exactly headline news (and nor does it exactly roll off the...

If you’re worried about your health data being misused by period-tracking apps, you can take steps to protect yourself. Find out more on how to erase your data by following the link below.

Privacy and Sexual and Reproductive Health in the Post-Roe world

We’ve taken the hard work out of staying informed on privacy issues by curating a weekly newsletter of what we think is important. Become a PI Insider and sign up today. ⬇️ pvcy.org/newsletter

Can you support us in fighting companies watching you online? pvcy.org/donate

To ensure that this is not the reality we soon find ourselves in, we are challenging Microsoft by working with the ICO - the UK data protection regulator - on a consultation about employee monitoring to fight the spread of privacy-invasive features in people’s lives. 💪

This lack of transparency means there’s a potential for misuse, and there is very little for employees to do to challenge this at-home surveillance without risk of losing their job.

Furthermore, data generated by Office 365 may be sent to Microsoft which can then potentially use it for a variety of purposes, including advertising.

All of this can give a worrying amount of information to an employer, and there’s no limits to how employers can use these features. There are no prompts informing workers if they’re enabled.

Two bleak features - Audit and Content Search - give admins access to e-mails, documents and 1-1 messages, and lets them see the actions someone has performed, what device they logged in with and when emails were deleted. 😬

Employers didn’t have to look too far, as Microsoft Office 365 suite (Word, Outlook, Excel etc) had everything someone would need to monitor at home performance. We thought a lot of employees wouldn’t be aware, so we did some research.

WFH - Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep

Imagine your performance at work was assessed directly from the amount of e-mails sent, the amount of time consumed editing a document, or the time spent in meetings or even moving your mouse. This...

The past two years have changed the context we work in, with many moving to remote working. Search engine queries for “How to monitor employees working from home” increased 1,705% in April 2020 on the previous year. 👀 Source: publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/han

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The projects presented in our latest podcast in Jordan and Lebanon are part of wider work supported by

@IDRC_CRDI

to research issues around sexual, reproductive & maternal health and data governance in the Middle East. Tune in and listen now 🎧

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In our latest podcast we spoke to @nourelarnaout from the Global Health Institute @ghiaub and Yousef Khader from the Global Health Development, Eastern Mediterranean Public Health Network @EMPHNET

Ṣàfihàn tírẹ́ẹ̀dì yìí

La Quadrature du Net

@laquadrature

Ògún 6

Très bonne nouvelle : la

@CNIL

pourrait sanctionner Criteo, entreprise de surveillance dont le modèle économique repose sur le profilage invasif et illégal des internautes, d'une amende de 60M d'€. Merci

, et pas bravo à la Startup Nation.

Quote Tweet

· Ògún 5

privacyinternational.org/advocacy/2426/

Ṣàfihàn tírẹ́ẹ̀dì yìí

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Listen to the podcast on our website or where ever you get your podcasts!

Maternal Health and Family Planning in the Middle East: Gender and Power

Context, gender, power, and choices

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We talked about how their work required them to consider key issues around gender and and power including the digital divide, data governance and specific challenges of deploying digital health interventions in fragile settings

ai-med.io

Malala Yousafzi rightly said, “we cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.” She was talking about women and girls.The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) exhibits a gender divide in both...

Ògún 8

In our latest podcast we spoke to

@nourelarnaout

from the Global Health Institute

@ghiaub

and Yousef Khader from the Global Health Development, Eastern Mediterranean Public Health Network

@EMPHNET

Ògún 7

In order to understand how new welfare benefits use data, we researched Covid-19 benefits. We found that countries didn't always prioritise individual's fundamental rights over innovation and efficiency. Read our latest welfare piece to learn more 👇

Emergency Social Protection responses to Covid-19 around the world

The global COVID-19 health crisis not only induced a public health crisis, but has led to severe social, economic and educational crises which have laid bare any pre-existing gaps in social protect...

Ògún 6

Did you know that #RoevWade was a privacy ruling? Read our analysis of how the US Supreme Court's overturning of the constitutional right to abortion has changed the privacy landscape 👇

Privacy and the Body: Privacy International’s response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s attack on...

The relationship between privacy and access to abortion care In 1973, in the state of Texas, it was a criminal offence to “procure or attempt” an abortion except if the purpos

And here is the DPIA that sets out the Home Office's sinister plans: privacyinternational.org/sites/default/

Criteo is just one of numerous companies that you've probably never heard about, but can be sure knows about YOU. We welcome CNIL's findings and hope surveillance advertising companies will take the hint and start complying with the law for once.

(4) They don't tell people who they share all these data and profiles with - and obviously don't even try to ask people for their consent.

(3) They do cross-device tracking and get more from other data brokers, developing an incredibly fine-grained view of most of an individual's activities through the day. That's also unlawful, as no one's told where all this data comes from.

(2) It considers that pseudonymising people's data means they can't know who individuals are and therefore it's all fine. That's not true - they know exactly who people are, because at the heart of their services is "individual shopper level" prediction.

(1) Criteo creates highly invasive, granular profiles of people without telling them. That's unlawful.

This is all done by collecting dizzying amounts of data from people's online activities, and by buying data from other AdTech and data broker companies. This is all unlawful - we argued:

They spy on people's online browsing behaviour to try and predict their propensity to engage with specific products, and the types of ad design they would best respond to. In short, it's a manipulation machine.

Criteo is an online advertising platform claiming to have captured the "identity and interest data" of 72% of all internet users, building "the world's largest open shopper data set", allowing them to "precisely predict what inspires shoppers and drive higher engagement"

ICJ Kenya

@ICJKenya

Privacy International and 5 others

In this era of increasing datafication, privacy and data protection issues are paramount in the private and public sectors. Join in to learn more. Register: bit.ly/ECAPRE2022 #ECAPRE2022

This is, sadly, just one of the myriad callous facets of the UK #HostileEnvironment, which we and migrant rights organisations will keep condemning.

Shining a light on the hostile environment

Last night, PI, Migrants Organise and Bail For Immigration Detainees joined forces to shine a light on the enduring plight of migrants in the UK who are subject to hardline and dehumanising Home...

Combined, they form an instrument of total surveillance and control. This is why we made submissions to the

@IndependentCI

to denounce this cruel Home Office practice.

PI submission on the GPS Tracking of Migrants in the UK

Privacy International’s submissions for the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration inspection of the Home Office Satellite Tracking Service Programme

Wearables are the last frontier in total digitalisation and surveillance of our lives, leading to inevitable human rights abuses when used by powerful institutions against vulnerable populations.

This is meant to be “less invasive” & “more proportionate” than GPS ankle tags. Who is the Home Office trying to fool? Facial recognition is a dangerous, discriminatory tech - it regularly misidentifies people of colour & is disproportionately used against minorities.

In an effort to monitor even more people and reach levels of total surveillance, the Home Office now wants to roll out smartwatches also recording 24/7 location data AND requiring people to scan their faces up to 5 times a day.