Search Taxonomy Terms

Challenging the Drivers of Surveillance

Powerful countries encourage and enable other governments to deploy advanced surveillance capabilities without adequate safeguards.

Scrutinising the global counter-terrorism agenda

Increasingly counter-terrorism strategies and policies are decided at the international level, most notably by the UN Security Council, and are used to erode human rights, with no accountability.

State Sponsors of Surveillance: The Governments Helping Others Spy

Powerful governments are financing, training and equipping countries — including authoritarian regimes — with surveillance capabilities.
 

Secret surveillance networks

Governments share our data amongst each other.

UN Cybercrime Treaty must protect Human Rights

The United Nations have initiated a process to negotiate an international treaty on cybercrime (more specifically, a comprehensive international convention on countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes). An open-ended, ad hoc intergovernmental committee of experts (Ad Hoc Committee) was established to conduct the negotiations which are expected to continue until at least the end of 2023. The Ad Hoc Committee shall convene at least six sessions, of 10 days each, to commence in January 2022, as well as a concluding session in New York, and conclude its work in order to provide a draft convention to the General Assembly at its seventy-eighth session (i.e. in 2024).

PI believes that cybercrime can pose a threat to the enjoyment of human rights. At the same time, we are concerned that cybercrime laws, policies and practices are currently being used to undermine human rights. This is why we are actively participating in the UN negotiations to ensure that any proposed cybercrime treaty includes human rights safeguards applicable to both its substantive and procedural provisions.