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Content Type: News & Analysis
After almost 20 years of presence of the Allied Forces in Afghanistan, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement in February 2020 on the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. A few weeks before the final US troops were due to leave Afghanistan, the Taliban had already taken control of various main cities. They took over the capital, Kabul, on 15 August 2021, and on the same day the President of Afghanistan left the country.
As seen before with regime…
Content Type: Report
In Somalia, international entities like the US Department of Defense (DoD) and intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations (UN) have used biometrics in the name of counterterrorism, collecting and indefinitely storing biometric data, frequently in the absence of full disclosure or appropritate regulation. These biometric initiatives have had dubious benefits and known detrimental effects on local populations. Nevertheless, most Somalis have little knowledge or say over how their…
Content Type: Report
In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. Department of Defense developed its biometric program in confluence with US military operations in. Its expansion was tightly linked to the goals of military commanders during the “War on Terror”: to distinguish insurgents and terrorists from the local civilian population. This research shows how the DOD’s biometric programme was developed and implemented without prior assessment of its human rights impact and without the safeguards necessary to prevent its…
Content Type: Report
In Israel/Palestine, the Israeli government has been deploying biometrics, including cutting-edge facial recognition technology, in the name of counter-terrorism. The Israeli state routinely surveils and severely restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement using myriad technologies, including biometrics, which result in furthering the policies of systemic segregation. Since many Palestinians live under Israeli occupation, they have little control over the way their sensitive data is turned…
Content Type: Long Read
Since the September 11th attacks, decision makers across the globe have embraced overreaching surveillance technologies. The global “War on Terror” ushered in and normalized an array of invasive surveillance technologies. Collection and storage of biometrics data and the application of statistical methods to such data have been touted as uniquely suited to twenty-first century threats. Yet, biometrics technologies are not seamless, panoptic technologies that allow for perfect control. They can…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Today Advocate General (AG) Campos Sánchez-Bordona of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), issued his opinions (C-623/17, C-511/18 and C-512/18 and C-520/18) on how he believes the Court should rule on vital questions relating to the conditions under which security and intelligence agencies in the UK, France and Belgium could have access to communications data retained by telecommunications providers.
The AG addressed two major questions:
(1) When states seek to impose…
Content Type: News & Analysis
The global counter-terrorism agenda is driven by a group of powerful governments and industry with a vested political and economic interest in pushing for security solutions that increasingly rely on surveillance technologies at the expenses of human rights.
To facilitate the adoption of these measures, a plethora of bodies, groups and networks of governments and other interested private stakeholders develop norms, standards and ‘good practices’ which often end up becoming hard national laws…
Content Type: Report
Financial services are changing, with technology being a key driver. It is affecting the nature of financial services, from credit and lending through to insurance, and even the future of money itself.
The field of fintech is where the attention and investment is flowing. Within it, new sources of data are being used by existing institutions and new entrants. They are using new forms of data analysis.
These changes are significant to this sector and the lives of people it serves. This…
Content Type: Report
Race relations across European states are usually far from ideal. However in law, European countries appear to grant Europeans ideal protections against discrimination. There are mounting tensions with ethnic and minority communities in countless European countries, with particular suspicion and aggression pointed towards the Roma people, Travellers, Northern Africans, Turks, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and people of Islamic and other faiths. Increasingly these groups are finding safe havens behind…