surveillance
As the Digital Society develops, more and more people worry that it won’t be the Utopia that internet pioneers once dreamed of; that it might even turn out to more like the dystopias that have featured in film and fiction over the years. Rather than an era of empowerment, could the Digital Society be a surveillance society? The most familiar dystopia The best-known fictional dystopia is probably George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. That raised three prospects that are increasingly ...
We, organisations, collectives, companies, associations and trade unions, ask the French Parliament and government to ban any use of facial recognition techniques for security and surveillance purposes, now and in the future. We note that such technologies are already being widely deployed in France. In addition to the “PARAFE” automated border gates already installed in various stations and airports in France, since 2012 and the creation of the prior criminal records database (the Traite...
A range of spyware vendors including Italian Hacking Team, the Anglo-German Gamma Group, and Israeli’s NSO Group, have found a ready market in authoritarian and repressive governments in Africa and elsewhere. Similarly, systematic propaganda campaigns designed by meddlesome actors – including government agents and ambitious data analytics companies such as Cambridge Analytica working on beh...
Oral statement delivered during the clustered interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteurs on the right to freedom of opinion and expression and on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association Human Rights Council 41st session 25 June 2019 Speaker: Alison Carmel Thank you Mr. President. The Association for Progressive Communications and 7amleh - the Arab Center for the Adv...
In 2018 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) affirmed that the “surveillance of digital communications must be consistent with international human rights obligations” and in accordance with a “publicly accessible, clear, precise, comprehensive and nondiscriminatory” legal framework, without any arbitrary or unlawful interference with the right to privacy. UNGA called on states and...
In the recent report from Privacy International, From Oppression to Liberation: Reclaiming the Right to Privacy, author Eva Blum-Dumontet frames privacy legislation as a “protector of human dignity and an enabler of autonomy”. Privacy allows women and members of marginalised communities to create safe spaces of expression and makes available tools that challenge norms that restrict equality...
The sociotechnical infrastructure that determines the way human activity is conducted largely functions within broader structures of surveillance capitalism and biopower. The former recognises the effective monetisation of data and information about people for (economic) activity. When probed, these inherent structures reveal an irreconcilability between modern surveillance states and fundament...
To: Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer, Google Inc cc: Ben Gomes, Vice President of Search; Kent Walker, Senior Vice President of Global Affairs; Scott Beaumont, Vice President, Greater China and Korea 11 December 2018 Dear Mr. Pichai, We are writing to ask you to ensure that Google drops Project Dragonfly and any plans to launch a censored search app in China, and to re-affirm the compan...
In 2012, the multinational supermarket chain Target sent targeted advertisements for maternity products to women, none of whom had disclosed to the supermarket that they were pregnant. This targeting was based on the volunteered and behavourial data of its customers with regard to 25 products, which enabled Target to assign its customers an automated “pregnancy prediction” algorithmic score...
Delivered by: Wafa Ben-Hassine on 18 September 2018 Thank you Mr. President. I represent Access Now and the Association for Progressive Communications, as well as over 40 other global human rights organisations that are ringing the alarm bell on the latest oppressive measures imposed on Egyptians online. I wish to bring to the Council’s attention the Cybercrime Law and the Media Regulation La...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2019
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