Photo: Sonny Abesamis
Under Surveillance: (Mis)use of Technologies in Emergency Responses
Dejusticia | February 8, 2023
Surveillance technologies exacerbated the impacts of Covid-19 emergency measures on civic space by allowing governments to collect fine-grained data about individuals while also working across large scales of information, in a way that has been unprecedented in the history of global pandemics.
To combat rising authoritarianism, the Emergency Powers Coalition, a collective of civil society organizations globally, is taking action to resist and roll back emergency powers in national laws and strengthen standards in international fora. As part of this effort, the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL), the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO) and Privacy International (PI) joined together to track the negative impacts of surveillance technology and measures employed during the Covid-19 pandemic on activist movements and organizations. This report provides key findings of this research and recommendations to ensure more human rights centered technological responses to future emergencies.
Research for the national case studies was conducted by project partners in six countries: Colombia (Dejusticia), France (La
Quadrature du Net), India (Amber Sinha), Indonesia (KontraS), Kenya (Kenya Human Rights Commission) and South Africa (Legal
Resources Centre). Local partners were given a list of questions to guide their research efforts. The case studies included in this report
were written by the partner organizations, with editorial feedback from ECNL, INCLO and PI.
Find the entire book here
