Article The Principles Week of Action: A World Without Mass Surveillance Between 15th-19th of September, in the week leading up the first year anniversary of the 13 Necessary and Proportionate Principles, Panoptykon Foundation and the coalition behind the 13 Principles will be conducting a week of action explaining some of the 13 guiding principles for surveillance law reform. Every day, we'll take on a different part of the principles, exploring what’s at stake and what we need to do to bring intelligence agencies and the police back under the rule of law. 15.09.2014 Text
Article Life under surveillance Panoptykon presents four short animated movies about family life "under surveillance". Series intend is to show how surveillance affects all of us: how use of modern tools such us cameras, ID cards, databases, scripts, and ad tracking tools - control all spheres of our lives. 14.06.2014 Text
Article Polish NGO to Obama: Mass Surveillance Is Not Freedom On June 4, 2014, one day before the anniversary of the Snowden revelations, Poland celebrates 25 years since the fall of an authoritarian regime. On this occasion, President Obama is visiting Poland and meeting with many heads of states—including officials who were affected by the mass surveillance scandal carried out by the NSA. Since October 2013, the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish NGO, has tried to understand the relationship between the Polish and United States’ secret service organizations. Panoptykon believes that the Polish government, by accepting mass and pre-emptive surveillance, is reverting back to the much contested practices of the former, authoritarian regime — practices that triggered the revolution 25 years ago. Thus, the NGO has organized a user-generated campaign for June 4, urging people to welcome President Obama to Poland by vocalizing their thoughts on mass surveillance. 03.06.2014 Text
Article Silence remains the easiest answer: Polish non-reactions to Snowden’s disclosures We are fast approaching an anniversary of first disclosures made by Edward Snowden. Even though the fundaments of our trust in democratic institutions and human rights safeguards have been shaken, political reality as seen from the European perspective remains more or less intact. What may seem even more frustrating, our understanding of the real politics behind mass surveillance programmes as revealed by Snowden remains limited. 15.05.2014 Text
Article Surveillance after Snowden, 6th Biannual Surveillance & Society Conference [VIDEO] The story of post-Snowden debate is a story of crossing the redlines that never should be crossed in democratic society. After at least 10 years of allegations, we gained evidence showing that surveillance is not about fighting terrorism or even public security. It is about intelligence agencies best interests and easy access to citizens data. Katarzyna Szymielewicz talks about these sad truths nearly 12 months after first disclosures made by Edward Snowden. 24.04.2014 Text
Article The Day We Fight Back: Poland Fights Back Against Unchecked Surveillance In 2013, we learned digital surveillance by the world’s governments has no limits. The NSA and other intelligence agencies are capturing our phone calls, tracking our location, peering into our contacts, and collecting our emails. They do this in secret, without adequate public oversight, and in violation of our human rights. We cannot tolerate this anymore. On Tuesday February 11, the world is fighting back. 09.02.2014 Text
Article Open Source Surveillance And Online Privacy, CPDP 2014 [VIDEO] Access of the law enforcement agencies and secret services upon more or less formal warrants and request do not cover the whole problem of the online surveillance. More and more date is available out there without any warrants – just to read, take and process. It is the situation, when the data that we all publish online, with more or less awareness of the consequences, is used by authorities mention above for whatever purposes. How purpose limitation could possibly be used to limit open source surveillance? To what extent privacy settings that by default enable or enhance making data public help in conducting this type of surveillance? How open source surveillance might influence individual? 24.01.2014 Text
Article Whatever happened to privacy?, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Conference [VIDEO] Just after Snowden revelations about NSA’s programs of bulk, mass surveillance there was hope for political change. Politics gave many promises regarding that issue. We were talking about freezing TFTP agreement till United States explains NSA activities, serious investigation in Brussels to find out what really those programs were about and how it affected fundamental rights of European citizens. We were talking about quickly negotiating new umbrella agreement on exchange of data connected to judicial matters and police cooperation. We were talking about revision of existing agreements on exchange of personal data, like SWIFT and PNR. But now are hearing that we need to rebuild trust, because of trade relations between EU and USA and economic crisis. 07.12.2013 Text
Article Poland's citizens need to know the impact of Prism on their lives Today a coalition of three Polish NGOs are submitting 100 detailed questions to the Polish authorities relating to the Prism affair. 16.10.2013 Text