Privacy International

Surveillance companies selling mass and intrusive spy technologies to human rights-abusing governments often are benefitting from the financial and institutional support from their home government, revealing a more closely-linked relationship between the sector and the State than previously believed.

According to a new study, international efforts to oversee the trade in surveillance technologies urgently need to be updated in order to keep up in the digital age.

Facing intense scrutiny from a Swiss government inquiry into the human rights impact of the commercial surveillance trade, companies have packed up and are no longer attempting to export their spying technology from Switzerland.

A call for a UN mandate on privacy emerged from an expert seminar held in Geneva this week on “The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age”.

Political activist and university lecturer Tadesse Kersmo believed that he was free from intrusive surveillance when he was granted political asylum in the UK. Instead, he was likely subject to more surveillance than ever. His case underlines the borderless nature of advanced surveillance technologies and why it represents such a massive problem. In the past, […]

In an attempt to begin to shine a light on the Five Eyes surveillance alliance – involving the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – Privacy International and individuals associated with Privacy International sent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to authorities in all five countries.

After suffering years of persistent harassment at the hands of his oppressive government, Tadesse Kersmo escaped Ethiopia in 2009. It was only a few years later he discovered that he had been followed from Ethiopia to England. Tadesse appears to have been tracked through his computer via a Trojan that is part of a commercial intrusion kit called FinFisher.

On 11 February, The Day We Fight Back, organisations and individuals around the world demanded an end to mass surveillance.