When They’re Not Safe, We’re All Unsafe: Impacted Communities There are innumerable documented cases of large-scale harms and human rights abuses via technology. Major human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International45, Human Rights Watch46, and ARTICLE 1947 have dedicated teams working on documenting and advocating against tech-related abuses. In the US and around the world the civil rights implications of tech are continuously being highlighted48 throughout the years. Numerous UN bodies, Special Rapporteurs, and experts routinely urge businesses and states to respond to and mitigate tech related harm49. And the nature of issues ranges enormously depending on the technology in question and the geographical, historical, political, and/or legal contexts. In some cases, everyday technologies and codes are weaponized and used against those at the margins, where if some the decentered cases had been built for, protection mechanisms would exist and at least some harms would be mitigated. In other cases, ideating and commencing any tech building process with those at the margins would have identified that certain technologies should not have been created, and the design, development, and deployment should have been challenged and halted: these are technologies that are discriminatory, invasive and perpetuate abuses by design. Many technologies are built and then scaled in contexts they were not designed for: by that, it means scaled and advertised to countries and communities where no impact assessment, consultation, or risk assessment was provided to implement changes based on the needs of groups who are at-risk. For example, since the early 00s and more operationalized now, 45
Amnesty International. 2022. Amnesty Tech | Amnesty International. [online] Available at: <https://www. amnesty.org/en/tech/#disruptingsurveillance> [Accessed 5 April 2022].
46
Hrw.org. 2022. Technology and Rights | Human Rights Watch. [online] Available at: <https://www.hrw.org/ topic/technology-and-rights> [Accessed 5 April 2022].
47
ARTICLE 19. 2022. What we do - ARTICLE 19. [online] Available at: <https://www.article19.org/what-wedo/> [Accessed 5 April 2022].
48
Harrison, D., 2022. Civil Rights Violations in the Face of Technological Change. [online] The Aspen Institute. Available at: <https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/civil-rights-violations-in-the-face-oftechnological-change/> [Accessed 6 April 2022].
49
Digitalhub.ohchr.org. 2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.digitalhub.ohchr.org> [Accessed 6 April 2022].
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School
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