Merry Christmas. We hope you enjoy your day tomorrow. This week we're bringing you tips for how to spot and deal with things that worry you about the gifts you or your kids may recieve tomorrow.

Links

Donate to PI and get your facemask: pvcy.org/donatepill

Mozilla's *privacy not included project: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/

US PIRG's Trouble in Toyland: https://uspirg.org/feature/usp/Trouble-In-Toyland

Roomba home maps: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/9/6/17817220/irobot-roomba-i7-robot-vacuum-empties-itself-maps-house and concerns from 2017 about Roomba sharing that information: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/technology/roomba-irobot-data-privacy.html

ICO advice: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2017/11/blog-the-12-ways-that-christmas-shoppers-can-keep-children-and-data-safe-when-buying-smart-toys-and-devices/

Extra audio credit details in order of appearance:

dj997 (additional bells)

Marta Tsvettsikh (fire sound)

waxsocks (ding dong merrily)

bilwiss (music box/silent night)

Today we're launching our Data Interception Environment for everyone to use. We've used it to research everything from low cost phones, to menstruation apps, and now we’re making it available so that you can do your own research on how your apps use your data.

Links

The ICO has provisionally issued a £17 million fine against facial recognition company Clearview AI

Read more about the ICO's provisional decision here: https://privacyinternational.org/press-release/4706/victory-ico-provisionally-issues-ps17-million-fine-against-facial-recognition

Support our work here: pvcy.org/donatepill

You can find out more about Clearview by listening to our podcast: The end of privacy? The spread of facial recognition

This week we talk to Daniel Magson, who has been campaigning to stop diet ad companies from targeting people with eating disorders, and Eva Blum-Dumontet, who wrote PI's recent report on the data collected by diet companies.

PI's diet ads report: https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/4603/unhealthy-diet-targeted-ads-investigation-how-diet-industry-exploits-our-data

More information on Instagram, targeted ads, and Frances Haugen - the Facebook whistleblower: https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/4622/reduce-facebooks-harms-teens-target-its-data-hungry-business-model

This week we talk to Juan Diego from Fundación Karisma - one of our  partners based in Colombia - about the use of technology in the response to the Covid pandemic and their report "Useless and Dangerous: A Critical Exploration of Covid Applications and Their Human Rights Impacts in Colombia".  

This week we talk to Massimo Marelli, Head of the Data Protection Office at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to discuss the use of data by humanitarian organisations in light of the serious concerns around data left behind in the US's withdrawal from Afghanistan and the risks presented by humanitarian agencies' increasing collection and use of data. 

Links

Read more about the Humanitarian Metadata Problem in our report on doing no harm in the digital age co-authored with the ICRC here: https://privacyinternational.org/report/2509/humanitarian-metadata-problem-doing-no-harm-digital-era 

And you can learn more about the history of development and humanitarian donors and agencies rush to adopt new technologies that threaten the right to privacy - in out Aiding Surveillance report from 2013: https://privacyinternational.org/report/841/aiding-surveillance

You can find more from Massimo and his work at the ICRC here: https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/contributor/massimo-marelli/

And you can read the ICRC's Handbook on data protection in humanitarian action here: https://www.icrc.org/en/data-protection-humanitarian-action-handbook

You can join the ICRC's 'Digitharium' - a global forum to discuss and debate digital transformation within the  humanitarian sector, with a focus on humanitarian protection, policy, ethics and action here: https://www.icrc.org/en/digitharium

You can sign up to learn more about working in data protection at humanitarian organisations here: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/events/data-protection-officer-dpo-humanitarian-action-certification 

In honour of Mental Health Awareness Day in the UK we're bringing back this episode from last year.

Find out more about the Mental Health Foundation here: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/

If you're worried about your mental health and want to try the NHS's mood self-assesment you can find it here: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mood-self-assessment/

Read our work on mental health here: https://privacyinternational.org/campaigns/your-mental-health-sale

This week we take a look at travel during the pandemic - we chat to staff about where they've been, what it was like, and most importantly: how they got there. 

This week we come back from our break to chat to PI staff about what we've been reading or plan to read this summer.

Links

Lucie's recommedations

Clara's recommendations

Millie's recommendations - you might recognise Millie's voice from our Phone Extraction podcast

Laura's recommendations

This week we’re talking to Andreea Belu - Campaigns and Communications Manager at EDRi - about evading facial recognition. We talk about our European Citizen's Iniative to ban facial recognition and how hard it is to guarantee that tools built to allow people to evade facial recognition will actually work. 

Links 

- You can find out more about the ECI here: pvcy.org/banbiometrics (If you're a European Citizen you can even sign it!) 

- You can find EDRi's masks (and their masks for MEP programme) here: https://edri.org/take-action/donate-mask/ and you can find out more about the project here: https://edri.org/our-work/can-a-covid-19-face-mask-protect-you-from-facial-recognition-technology-too/ 

- You can take the Paper Bag Society challenge on mosts social media platforms - check out the #PaperBagSociety hashtag to find out more 

- Watch this space (or sign up for our email at https://action.privacyinternational.org/) to find out more about how you can get a mask from PI

 - The podcast survey is here: pvcy.org/tpsurvey 

- You can find our Spotter's Guide to Facial Recognition here: https://privacyinternational.org/video/4489/spotters-guide-facial-recognition