Technology Pill

Welcome to the last of our short series on encryption. This week we're just talking amongst ourselves, luckily Gus is an expert on encryption - having been working in and around the encryption debate since the '90s. Links - Read more about PI's work on encryption here: ⁠privacyinternational.org/learn/encryption⁠ - Matt Blaze and crypto.com: theverge.com/2018/7/6/17540818/crypto-com-dom...

This week we speak to Ioannis, a senior lawyer at PI, about his and his colleague's work on the landmark case protecting encyrption at the European Court of Human Rights: Podchasov v. Russia. The case dealt with a Russian law obliging telecommunications service providers to indiscriminately retain content and communications data for certain time periods, as well as a 2017 disclosure order by t...

What do you know about cryptography? Have you ever wanted to get a better understanding of some of the maths behind encryption? This week we speak to Ed, a Senior Technologist at PI, about some of the history and basics of encryption. Find out more about encryption: - Computerphile on youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/@Computerphile) is a computer science professor with a range of useful and acces...

This week we speak to Mark Nelson, a car mechanic and father of five, who has been forced to wear a GPS tag by the Home Office for the past 20 months, and his lawyer Katie Schwarzmann of Wilsons Solicitors. The pair have been challenging the Home Office's ongoing imposition of GPS tracking on Mark in the courts and are now awaiting a judgement. We explore the legal case, the ways the tag hasn&...

This week we talk about good things (or good-ish things) that you might have missed from 2023! Links Companies getting disciplined - Ovulation Tracking App Premom Will be Barred from Sharing Health Data for Advertising Under Proposed FTC Order https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/ovulation-tracking-app-premom-will-be-barred-sharing-health-data-advertising-under-proposed-ftc...

This week we have a think about generative AI. After a concerning Guardian article about deep fake scams, we ask the question: did we really understand the risks when we started a podcast? The audio clips featured in this podcast episode are the intellectual property of Smart Energy GB (Clip 1), Kim Kardashian (Clip 2), the Hollywood Reporter (Clip 3) and Lucasfilm Ltd (Clip 4). All rights are res...

This week we speak to competition expert Dr Deni Mantzari about competition, monopoly, and regulation. Are big tech companies monopolies? And if they are is that a problem? Since we recorded this podcast there has been an update on the Microsoft Activision merger: https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/13/23796552/microsoft-activision-blizzard-cma-approval-uk Links PI competition page (our "very in...

This month we speak to Dr Leonie Tanczer about her work looking at tech abuse: the use of “everyday” digital systems (computers, smartphones, apps) to coerce, control, and harm a person or groups of individuals. This is increasingly prevalent in the context of domestic abuse - around 85% of victims and survivors in the UK have been subjected to some form of tech abuse. Links Refuge's Tech Safe...

In this episode we chat with Ben Wizner - Edward Snowden's lawyer, and the director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project - and Caroline Wilson Palow - PI's Legal Director about what it was like to be knee deep in the legal and policy responses to Snowden's revelations, holding British and US intelligence agencies to account for secret powers. Additional audio from The...

This week we're discussing the UK Home Office's practice of forcing migrants to wear GPS ankle tags or carry GPS fingerprint scanners. Find out more about the policy, its impact on people, how the trackers work and why we think its wrong for a company to profit from all of this. Links Send Capita an email at: pvcy.org/GPSaction Find out more on our website about the campaign: https://priva...

This week we’re joined by Lucy and Laura to discuss the use of technology in elections, and their time monitoring the Kenyan Presidential Election in 2022. Links Human rights abuses including unlawful killings by police, violence at Kenya's 2017 election: https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/08/27/kenya-post-election-killings-abuse Claims of fraud from Kenya's last election: https://www.cartercen...

This week we're speaking to Claudia Duque an Human Rights Defender and journalist for over 25 years, reported on crimes occurred during armed conflict and Emi, a Colombian lawyer defending press freedom. Claudia has been subjected to death threats, and was given official protection by the Colombian Government, including an armoured car. However, that protection was used to surveil her, includi...

In January 2023, the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal handed down a landmark judgment. The Tribunal held that there were “very serious failings” at the highest levels of MI5 - the UK's domestic intelligence agency - to comply with privacy safeguards from as early as 2014, and that successive Home Secretaries did not to enquire into or resolve these long-standing rule-breaking despite obvious red...

This week we're having our own little christmas party, discussing things we've achieved throughout 2022.  Read more about the things we've achieved throughout the year , and donate to PI as much or as little as you can afford . Credits:   As ever, with a huge thank you to Sepia!  dj997 via freesound acclivity via freesound Marta Tsvettsikh via freesound CNN Sky News

This week we speak  to Gillian Tully, the UK’s former forensic regulator about the  importance and challenges that come with trying to ensure that forensic  evidence submitted in court is of a high quality. Links More about Gillian Tully: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/gillian-tully Original Phone Extraction podcast: https://privacyinternational.org/video/3786/podcast-extraction GOS t...

This week we're talking to Cory Doctorow about his new book Chokepoint Capitalism - coauthored with Rebecca Giblin, his as yet unpublished next book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, and how corporate power is shaping our rights. Quick corrections!  - GDPR compensation is in theory possible through court action: https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/data-protection-and-j...

This week we're talking about Education Technology: what is it? Why are  schools using it? Is it safe? How can we make sure that children aren't  being asked to sacrifice their right to privacy in order to access  their right to an education? Links - Read more of our work on EdTech: https://privacyinternational.org/campaigns/edtech - Find out more about Google Classroom in Denmark:...

This week we speak to Sebastian Meineck, a journalist from Netzpolitik about PimEyes, a free(ish) face search engine similar to Clearview, but for public consumption.  Please note this podcast was recorded before Sebastian and Netzpolitik were able to talk to PimEyes CEO Gobronidze in person. You can read that interview here: https://netzpolitik.org/2022/pimeyes-ceo-the-user-is-the-stalker-no...

In this episode, Alexandrine Pirlot de Corbion, our Director of  Strategy, speaks to Nour El Arnaout, from the Global Health Institute,  American University of Beirut, Lebanon and Yousef Khader, from the  Global Health Development, Eastern Mediterranean Public Health Network  and the Faculty of Medicine, Jordan University of Science and  Technology, Jordan, about digital h...

This week we talk to Ina Sander from Cardiff University about how to talk to people about  privacy, drawing on her research looking at how to teach 'critical data  literacy' in schools.    Links You can find a resource for teachers we've been working with Ina on here: https://privacyinternational.org/learning-resources/teaching-about-data-resource-educators   You can read...

While being the world’s largest provider of aid, Europe also exports  surveillance around the world by training police, providing surveillance  techand building widescale databases. While the benefits for European arms and security companies is clear, how this helps those it’s supposed to is less obvious. We sat down with investigative journalist Giacomo to talk more about  the impa...

Hundreds of  companies around the world which develop and sell surveillance tech used  to spy on people, making everything from malware used by governments to  hack into phones to mass internet surveillance tools to monitor nationwide internet traffic. Italy is one of the main producers. We spoke to investigative journalists Lorenzo and Riccardo from IRPI Media who have been digging...

The migration crisis in 2015 brutally exposed the divisions in Europe. People who fled  war and make it to Europe are being met with violence and intrusive  surveillance at the border at the hands of state authorities. We sat down with Natalie & Sergio from the Border Violence Monitoring Network to learn more about the situation at Europe’s borders. This is the first episode in our B...

This is a brief programming note. The next three weeks we'll be releasing episodes of a new mini-series looking at how surveillance is  spreading around the world, driven by Europe’s war on migration and a  complex web of surveillance and arms companies. Join Edin, PI's advocacy director, and some fascinating guests every Friday for the next three weeks for: Border Surveillance.  Th...

This week talk to Franz Wild from the Bureau of Investigative Journalists to discuss how the UK became a haven for the private intelligence industry and how corporate spies have been allowed to run wild. Links: The Enablers by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/projects/the-enablers PI’s report: https://privacyinternational.org/report/4850/briefing-contro...