Privacy International
Description
Privacy International, known as PI, has worked since 1990 to promote the human right to privacy worldwide. It builds a global movement of partner organisations. It campaigns for companies to protect privacy by design rather than exploit people’s data. It also campaigns for laws, technologies and policies with modern safeguards against exploitation.
PI educates and mobilises people and communities to protect their data and rights. It helps them resist and object to exploitation by governments and industry. It also pursues litigation, challenging government and corporate surveillance in court.
Its research and advocacy cover topics such as poverty, metadata and health data. It publishes long-read analyses and explainers on emerging surveillance technologies. PI has tracked and analysed government and corporate responses to covid-19, including contact tracing and proximity tracking apps. These were used by governments such as China, South Korea, India, Israel, Kenya, Turkey, Germany and the United Kingdom.
PI assessed whether these tools were centralised or decentralised, mandatory or voluntary, and what risks they posed to privacy and equality. It ran a campaign against what it calls the global covid-19 power grab. It has commented on international texts such as the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Agreement negotiations.
PI states that it works hard to be a good employer and a good organisation. It describes itself as accountable to its funders and the public. It says all its team members share responsibility for building and maintaining a good organisation.
Latest news
Our submission covers the following topics, following the government's call for evidence:
25 Sep 2026
An Arsenal of Surveillance: A Guide to the Technologies Harming Migrants
Governments around the world are building increasingly sophisticated surveillance infrastructures to monitor migrants, asylum seekers and refugees at borders and within countries.
21 Sep 2026
Interoperability, Privacy, and the Limits of the Digital Markets Act
Technology giants like Apple, Meta, Google, and Microsoft spend billions of dollars to keep you in their walled gardens. The more data that is kept within one ecosystem, the harder it is to move to another, and the more challenging it is for an upstart to break into the fray
10 Sep 2026
New InternetLab report analyzes the impacts of the spread of artificial intelligence, particularly facial recognition technologies, in the public education system
11 Aug 2026
The Play That Taught Garissa Its Rights
In Garissa Town, Kenya, on a warm evening in late October, a crowd gathered not for a rally or a court hearing, but for a play. Paralegals took the stage alongside community members, performing in Somali, Swahili and English.
11 Aug 2026
The new space race is already a war race
Satellites are strategic assets at the heart of global power. We have heard the story before: the moon race, the space race, the promise of progress framed as the conquest of territories beyond Earth.
30 Jul 2026
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