Security and privacy

At the UN First Committee, two processes – the UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) and the Open-ended Working Group  – are exploring the same question: responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. This paper examines norms in cyberspace, or "cyber norms", and their relevance to human rights.

The Observatoire des Libertés Numériques and 80 organisations, including APC, signed this joint letter calling on the French government and parliament to ban any present and future use of facial recognition for security and surveillance purposes.

The undersigning civil society organisations express concern over the global trend of persecuting digital rights defenders, including security researchers and trainers who act to protect and promote human rights, and demand protection of their work and their recognition as human rights defenders.

The tools and tactics of these operators, who are mostly non-African, are increasingly undermining democracy and respect for human rights in Africa, as they enable mass surveillance and disinformation that manipulates and undermines political discourse. 

GreenNet, the ethical internet service provider that has been connecting people and groups since 1986, suffered a DDoS attack on 22 and 23 November 2019. Forensic examinations revealed that the attack was targeted at an organisation publishing new research that weekend.

From APC’s perspective, we feel it’s important to integrate cybersecurity in our broader work on internet governance capacity building, because cybersecurity touches on so many other areas of internet governance.

This statement focuses on responding to the question: How can non-governmental stakeholders contribute to the implementation of the voluntary non-binding norms of responsible state behaviour contained in the report of the 2015 Group of Governmental Experts?

Efforts to bolster cybersecurity often ignore the human rights dimension, or worse, view human rights as an impediment to cybersecurity. This is a dangerous and misguided assumption. Cybersecurity is a human rights issue, and it is time to start treating it like one.