Digital technologies as a means of repression and social control
governments that want to develop their surveillance model 140, while still importing sophisticated biometric surveillance tools from Europe 141. Box 5: Pegasus - A global espionage tool? A prominent example of a company exporting its spyware products to a number of countries with dubious human rights records is the Israel-based NSO Group. As documented by different human rights organisations, NSO Group’s Pegasus mobile phone spyware has been repeatedly misused to target human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers or opposition politicians in at least 4 countries (Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates), while in general it has been established that the malware was used in 45 states across the globe (including EU Member States such as Greece, France, Latvia, Poland and the Netherlands) 142. When Pegasus is installed, an attacker has access to a phone’s messages, e-mails, media, microphone, camera, calls, and contacts. The attacks are difficult for a victim to detect as they leave few traces and are therefore often carried out leaving little chance to identify perpetrators and hold them to account. In 2019, the NSO Group publicly committed to abide by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. However, an investigation by Amnesty International revealed that just days after the company made that commitment, journalist Omar Radi in Morocco was targeted with NSO’s Pegasus software 143.
2.6
Conclusions
Even though the proliferation of digital technologies has undoubtedly facilitated the exercise of human rights in many ways 144, the overview of the trends presented in this chapter shows that it has also significantly expanded states’ toolkit for repression and social control. These technologies are actively deployed and shaped by many repressive regimes to their own strategic advantage. While China emerges as undisputed leader the in this respect, harnessing sophisticated technologies to undermine human rights has occurred in all parts of the world. This includes both authoritarian and non-authoritarian regimes with advanced technological capacities, as well as less technologically developed states for which opportunities to import ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions from abroad have become increasingly available. The main global trend emerging in recent years has been the expansion of sophisticated and ubiquitous data collection, especially a rise of biometric surveillance coupled with algorithmic decision-making (and concomitant challenges posed by algorithmic systems, such as the amplification of existing biases and a lack of transparency in ‘black box’ machine learning systems). Such mass-scale data collection, conducted in online and increasingly also offline spaces and used for monitoring, assessing, predicting and influencing people’s behaviour, has enabled a new mode of governance premised on profiling, sorting, According to report of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, China is already a leader in supplying surveillance technology worldwide (technology linked to Chinese companies—particularly Huawei, Hikvision, Dahua, and ZTE—supply AI surveillance technology in 63 countries, while Chinese product pitches are often accompanied by soft loans to encourage governments to purchase their equipment). One of the most recent examples is the agreement between Kyrgyz government and the China National Electronic Import and Export Corporation to install facial recognition technology in Kyrgyzstan. See, Feldstein, S., 'The Global Expansion of AI Surveillance’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2019.; Human Rights Watch, ‘Facial Recognition Deal in Kyrgyzstan Poses Risks to Rights’, 15 November 2019.; Human Rights Watch, 'China’s Global Threat to Human Rights', 2020. Import of the surveillance equipment from China has also been increasingly prevalent in Latin America. See, Interview with Gaspar Pisanu, Latin America Policy Manager, Access Now, 6 January 2021. One example is the ‘intelligent CCTV system’ functioning in Ecuador. See: Mozur, P., Kessel, J. M. and Chan M., ‘Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State’, New York Times, 24 April 2020. 141 Dragu, T. and Lupu, Y., op. cit., pp. 32-33; Amnesty International (2020), EU companies selling surveillance tools to China’s human rights abusers, 21 September 2020. 142 Amnesty International, 'Israel: Stop NSO Group exporting spyware to human rights abusers',14 January 2020; Marczak, B., Scott-Railton, J., McKune, S., Razzak, B. A. and Deibert, R., 'Hide and Seek: Tracking NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware to Operations in 45 Countries', Citizen Lab Research Report No. 113, University of Toronto, 18 September 2018. 143 Amnesty International, 'NSO Group spyware used against Moroccan journalist days after company pledged to respect human rights', 22 June 2020. 144 Even though this chapter and the whole study focus on threats posed by digital technologies to human rights, some advantageous uses of those technologies have been also flagged (such as encryption tools enhancing privacy and security online or communication technologies facilitating documenting and informing about human rights violations). 140
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