[3] Members of the new body, including computer professionals, academics, lawyers, journalists, jurists, and activists, had a common interest in promoting an international understanding of the importance of privacy and data protection.

PI evolved as an independent, non-government network with the primary role of advocacy and support, but largely failed in its first decade to become a major international player.

The restructuring also established three major program areas: contesting surveillance, challenging data exploitation, and building a global privacy movement.

[15] Throughout the 1990s, Privacy International was active in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, where it liaised with local human rights organizations to raise awareness about the development of national surveillance systems.

[16] Since the late 1990s, the organization's campaigns, media activities and projects have focused on a wide spectrum of issues, including Internet privacy, international government cooperation, passenger name record transfers, data protection law, anti-terrorism developments, freedom of information, Internet censorship, identity systems, corporate governance, the appointment of privacy regulators, cross-border data flows, data retention, judicial process, government consultation procedures, information security, national security, cybercrime, and aspects of around a hundred technologies and technology applications ranging from video surveillance to DNA profiling.

In Thailand and the Philippines, for example, Privacy International worked with local human rights bodies to develop national campaigns against the establishment of government identity card systems.

However the core team is supported in its project work by a collaborative network of around a hundred organizations in the fields of civil liberties, academia, technology assessment and human rights.

[56] The following month, a European Parliament resolution calling for stricter oversight of companies selling equipment to countries such as Syria or China was passed overwhelmingly, with 580 votes for, 28 against, and 74 abstentions.

In July 2012, the French Minister for the Digital Economy, Fleur Pellerin, announced her opposition to exports of surveillance technology to repressive regimes during a radio show hosted by Le Monde and public broadcaster France Culture.

The "Stupid Security" award highlighted measures which are pointless and illusory, and which cause unnecessary distress, annoyance and unintended danger to the public.

Privacy International director Simon Davies said that the organization had filed the complaint due to the "clear embarrassment and damage" Street View had caused on many Britons.

He said that Street View fell short of the assurances given to the ICO that had enabled its UK launch and asked for the system to be "switched off" while an investigation was completed.

[59] The ICO had given permission for the launch of the service in July 2008 based partly on Google's assurances that it would blur faces and vehicle licence plates to protect privacy.

[60] However, the ICO rejected PI's complaint, noting that removing the service would be "disproportionate to the relatively small risk of privacy detriment" and that "Google Street View does not contravene the Data Protection Act and, in any case, it is not in the public interest to turn the digital clock back".

[61] In February 2015 PI and other claimants[62] won a judgment from the UK Tribunal that the mass surveillance conducted by the GCHQ with data from the NSA was illegal up to December 2014, being in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and lacking the necessary legal framework,[63][64] whereupon PI launched a campaign enabling anyone in the world to ascertain (eventually) if the GCHQ illegally had their data from the NSA.

The most notable political controversy surrounding the organization was sparked in 2005 when British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Home Secretary Charles Clarke publicly accused PI's director and founder Simon Davies of covertly using his academic affiliation with the London School of Economics (LSE) to undermine the government's plans for a national identity card.

The episode is notable for the nature of its overtly political attack on an academic report from a leading UK university and its personalization of criticisms of Simon Davies.

Even MPs who supported identity cards recognized that the government had entered new territory by undermining independent academic work on issues of legitimate contemporary interest.

[73] The coverage led Davies to draw comparisons of the argument with former government scientific advisor David Kelly who took his life following an allegedly similar campaign.

Currently PI publishes State of Privacy reports with its partners, researching the legal and political situation in each country, updated yearly.