Police Are Using AI for Mass Surveillance in the US and in Europe
There is a tension in the world of privacy. On the one hand, governments are using intelligence services and police forces to say we need more surveillance to better protect…
Governments
Meta Hit With 1.2 Billion Euros Fine For Violating the GDPR – Time It Adopted a Federated Approach
Meta has been ordered to pay a fine of 1.2 billion euros (around $1.3 billion) for violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by sending personal data of EU…
The EU’s GDPR Is 5 Years Old and Still Not Working Properly: How Can It Be Fixed?
The European Union’s flagship law on privacy, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is five years old. It has undoubtedly had a dramatic impact on the privacy world, as the…
How a New UN Cybercrime Treaty Could Lead to the Repression of Civil Liberties
Spyware is arguably one of the most insidious threats to privacy today. While other forms of privacy invasion – CCTV surveillance or even browser cookies – are more or less…
What Do Iran’s Theocrats And Tesla Vehicles Have In Common? The Use of High-Tech Surveillance Cameras
Digital technology is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it makes vital tools like VPNs possible, providing strong and affordable privacy protection for personal data when in transit across…
Data Protection Authorities Around the World Investigate ChatGPT Over Privacy Concerns
At the beginning of February, when the excitement over generative AI systems like ChatGPT was starting to build, I warned on the PIA blog “it seems certain that much of…
TikTok Bans Miss the Point, But Are Still Great News for Privacy
Privacy concerns about the social media platform TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, are not new. We've been reporting on them on the PIA blog for several years. More…
UK Government Is Engaged in Large-Scale Surveillance of Social Media
New US And EU Laws Bring Risks To Privacy The UK civil rights group Big Brother Watch has published a major new document about the UK government's surveillance of social…
EU to Use ePrivacy and GDPR to Tackle Illegal Cookie Walls
One of the biggest criticisms of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is that it has led to a plague of annoying pop-ups and Web pages requesting permission to…
Meta’s Lawsuit Against NSO Goes Forward – The Fight Against NSO Spyware Gains Strength
The murky world of government spyware has never been the same after the Pegasus Project leaked in July 2021 a list of over 50,000 phone numbers believed to be people…