Fundación Karisma

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Media

Summary

Privacy International filed an expert witness statement in a case challenging the "Maisha Namba Digital Identity Ecosystem”(Maisha Namba) in Kenya, highlighting concerns emerging from identity systems around the world and proposed measures to mitigate the same.

Joint Stakeholder Submission - Colombia, 44th Universal Periodic Review

staff — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 15:46:06 +0000

Audiences and Purpose

We demand change and litigate

Change

Content

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Summary

Dejusticia, Fundación Karisma, and Privacy International submitted a joint stakeholder report on Colombia to the 44th session of the Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council.

Media

Dejusticia, Fundación Karisma, and Privacy International submitted a joint stakeholder report on Colombia to the 44th session of the Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council.

Our submission raised concerns regarding the protection of the rights to freedom of expression and opinion, to privacy, and to personal data protection; the shutdown of civil society spaces; protection of the right to protest; and protection of the rights of the Venezuelan migrant and refugee population.

Recommendations

Revise the legal framework governing surveillance in Colombia, especially the Intelligence Law and the Police Code, to ensure that it complies with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, particularly article 17, and that any interference with the right to pri- vacy is necessary and strictly proportional to the objective pursued.
Regulate the state’s power to monitor the internet and ensure that such regulation is in line with international human rights law standards. This includes establishing limits, checks and balances, oversight and accountability mechanisms, and sanctions for abuses that include remedies for victims.
Amend Resolutions 2774 of 2013 and 1823 of 2018 of the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications in order to prevent security agencies from using signal jamming devices without a warrant. These amendments should prohibit the use of jammers that prevent the communication and circulation of information under the pretext of maintaining public order. They should also respect the principles of proportionality, legality, and legitimacy in the use of this technology and create clear channels to monitor its use by the state.
Regulate cyber-patrolling activities so that they are confined to inves- tigating cybercrime and common-law offenses, as well as to protecting people in the digital environment from cyber threats. The regulations should provide for limits, controls, monitoring and accountability mechanisms, and penalties for abuses, including remedies for victims, and should prohibit the use of cyber-patrolling to categorize news as false or to stigmatize protestors.
Comply with national and international protocols and standards on the use of force in the context of social gatherings, protests, or demonstrations, adhering to the principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality, in order to ensure that force is used as a last resort.
Avoid the use of criminal law to prosecute people who participate in, convene, organize, or lead social protests. Initiating legal proceed- ings and charging people with crimes without the required evidence weakens democracy, discourages public participation, infringes the right to protest, and affects community leadership.
Guarantee expediency, transparency, and impartiality in disciplinary and criminal proceedings against police officers involved in human rights violations committed in order to ensure that victims have access to justice.
Regulate the use of information from the National Civil Registry data- bases, particularly biometric data, to ensure that such information cannot be used for mass surveillance purposes.
Before incorporating technologies, especially biometrics, into national identity documents, conduct comprehensive human rights impact assessments and ensure that any such decisions are subject to dem- ocratic deliberation.
Ensure the transparency of mechanisms used to distribute social assistance (such as SISBEN and the Universal Income Registry), and guarantee that there are efficient and clear channels to update or correct the personal data contained in these databases.
Adopt measures to regulate the use of new technologies in the health care sector to ensure the protection of users’ human rights, particularly those who are members of vulnerable or marginalized communities.
Cease the collection of personal data through applications developed to address the COVID-19 pandemic, and ensure that the use and cir- culation of the data already gathered does not exceed the purposes for which it was originally collected.
Adopt legislation to effectively address gender-based violence that is facilitated by the internet or technologies. Such legislation should respect the fundamental rights to freedom of expression and privacy.
Comply with its obligation to adopt legislative measures to effectively address gender-based violence that is facilitated by the internet or
Review the barriers preventing access to the ETPMV in order to make regularization accessible to Venezuelan migrants over the long term and to facilitate their future stability in Colombia. In this regard, it is important to highlight that this regularization measure should not absolve the Colombian state of its responsibility to guarantee interna- tional protection for or to confer refugee or stateless status on those who require it.
Stop the disproportionate capture of biometric data of migrant pop- ulations and regulate in a clear and specific manner the allowed uses of such databases as well as the security guarantees and the time periods for their validity.
Ensurethatthemigrantandrefugeepopulationhasaccesstoworkas guaranteed under international and national human rights standards on decent work, which include paying a fair income, providing access to social security and job security, and protecting the right to paid rest periods and the right to organize and participate.96
Strengthen and expand awareness raising activities and trainings on current and future guidelines concerning the education-related rights of migrant children and adolescents (e.g., Circular 016, modifications to Decree 1075 of 2015, and ICFES circulars) with schools and secre- tariats of education.

Nuestro informe de terceras partes interesadas esta disponible en español.

Location

Colombia

More about our partner

Dejusticia

The Center for Law, Justice and Society (Dejusticia) is a Colombia-based NGO that works to strengthen the rule of law and promote human rights in Colombia and across the developing world. It produces research to contribute to action for social change, and carries out advocacy through campaigns, litigation, education and capacity-building.

Country of Operation

Region of Operation

Website

Dejusticia

Fundación Karisma

Founded in 2003, Fundación Karisma is a civil society organisation dedicated to supporting and disseminating the good use of technologies in digital environments, social processes and public policies in Colombia and the region, with a human rights focus. It also undertakes legal and technological activism in coalitionwith local, regional and international partners.

Country of Operation

Region of Operation

Website

Learn more

Surveillance and data exploitation affect us all, but by learning about the unique experiences and challenges faced by LGBTIQ+ populations we can better understand how patriarchy and systems of oppression function.

Migrants are bearing the burden and losing agency in their migration experience: their fate is being put in the hands of systems that are feeding the surveillance and data exploitation ecosystem.

Surveillance and data exploitation affect us all, but by learning about the unique experiences and challenges faced by women, trans and gender diverse people, we can better understand how patriarchy and systems of oppression function.

The range of topics PI explores, focusing on powers and capabilities of governments.

Intrusive surveillance technology is increasingly used during protests around the world having a chilling effect to their freedom of assembly and association.

As digital communications grow, governments continue to seek new ways of getting access to content and metadata.

Advances in technology significantly advance the capabilities of police, with few safeguards and no transparency.

Mass surveillance can subject a population or significant component thereof to indiscriminate monitoring, involving a systematic interference with people’s right to privacy and all the rights that privacy enables, including the freedom to express yourself and to protest.

Being able to assert who we are and what claims we have can be empowering. But identity checks are increasingly conducted and required, both with and without our knowledge.

The data generated through peoples' use of social media becomes valuable intelligence to others, who want to monitor, profile, and manipulate.

The use of technology and data in the realisation of economic, social and cultural rights raises, among others, some key concerns in relation to the protection, respect and promotion of the right to privacy.

PI’s submission to the UN Human Rights Committee regarding Colombia’s compliance with ICCPR

staff — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 10:47:00 +0000

Content

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Summary

PI’s submission regarding Colombia’s compliance with the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights highlights concerns regarding changes in electoral law, the continued surveillance of human rights defenders, and the emergence of new OSINT tactics.

Media

Achieved result

In its concluding observations, the Committee highlighted concerns regarding the unlawful surveillance deployed against human rights defenders and journalists, as well as the use of social media monitoring by Colombian authorities in the context of protests.

In June 2023, we made a submission to the Human Rights Committee ahead of its 138th Session in relation to Colombia’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

We called on the UN Human Rights Committee to make the following recommendations to Colombia:

The Electoral Law should ensure that the electoral register does not include personal data other than what is required to establish eligibility to vote. The law should define the minimum standards of security to protect the voters’ register against unauthorised access; it should also define the conditions and limits of sharing and access to the personal data. In particular, biometric data (including photographs) must not be used for anything other than the stated purpose in law and subjected to additional protection against unauthorised access or other data breaches, including storing biometric data separately from other personal data.
Review and amend national legislation to ensure that interception of communications by intelligence agencies and other security and law enforcement forces comply with the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality and provide for effective, independent oversight, prior judicial authorisation and access to effective remedies for unlawful surveillance, in line with Article 17 of ICCPR.
Adopt precise legal framework to govern the collection, analysis and sharing of social media and open source intelligence (including the activities known as cyberpatrolling) that clearly define permissible grounds, prerequisites, authorization procedures and adequate oversight mechanisms.

More about our partner

Dejusticia

Country of Operation

Region of Operation

Website

Dejusticia

Fundación Karisma

Country of Operation

Region of Operation

Website

Joint amicus brief PI and others

Target Stakeholders

Learn more

Unique data, generated from characteristics of humans, may be used to track and profile people across their lives.

Being able to assert who we are and what claims we have can be empowering. But identity checks are increasingly conducted and required, both with and without our knowledge.

Democratic engagement is increasingly mediated by digital technology, from campaigning to election results transmission. These technologies rely on collecting, storing, and analysing personal information to operate. They raise novel issues and challenges for all electoral stakeholders on how to protect our data from exploitation.

Our fight

Data and Elections

Democratic society is under threat from a range of players exploiting our data in ways which are often hidden and unaccountable.

CAJAR v Colombia (IACtHR) - Documents

staff — Fri, 19 May 2023 11:07:58 +0000

CAJAR v Colombia (IACtHR) - Documents staff Friday, May 19, 2023

Attachments

IACtHR - Judgment - March 2024

Partner

Members of José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective v Colombia

Legal Case Name

Covid and Tech: A view from Colombia

caitlinb — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 14:47:51 +0000

Covid and Tech: A view from Colombia

The case of the Solidarity Income in Colombia: the experimentation with data on social policy during the pandemic

tech-admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 11:55:55 +0000

The case of the Solidarity Income in Colombia: the experimentation with data on social policy during the pandemic tech-admin Monday, March 29, 2021

This piece was written by Joan López, researcher at Fundación Karisma, and originally posted on their website.

The uncertainty of this crisis has become an opportunity for the implementation of technological solutions to complex issues instead of coherent decision-making processes. During the social and economic crisis caused by Covid-19, the National Development Office (DNP in Spanish) in Colombia, in just two weeks, set up an unconditional cash transfer system for 3 million citizens. The program was called Solidarity Income (“Ingreso Solidario”). The objective of this article is to analyze the kind of social policy introduced by the Solidarity Income and its problems for building a fairer society.

Since the 90s, Colombian social policy is liberal because it is based on targeting resources to people in poverty. In other words, the State created mechanisms to “search for the poor” and bring them the limited resources available. In this context, the System of Possible Beneficiaries of Social Programs (Sisbén in Spanish) appeared as the main instrument to target social assistance. This system rates people with scores from 0 to 100 in terms of “prosperity".

To understand the difference between the Solidarity Income and traditional social policy, we must understand how the allocation of a social benefit works in terms of the data used to identify the beneficiaries (See Table 1).

The first targeted social programs used an examination of the conditions of each household in which citizens were actors in the production of the data. The Sisbén score emerged from an institutional effort to “search” for vulnerable populations through surveys in impoverished areas that resulted in a score ranging from 0 to 100. Depending on the score, people are eligible for social programs managed by different state agencies. The needed score to be eligible is set by each program and agency.

The Solidarity Income changed the relationship between the data used to assign a benefit and the participation of people in the system. Amid the crisis, the response was an experiment that involved using as much data as possible to “find” people who “needed” but were not receiving traditional social programs. The program built a new Master Information Database, in which the National Development Office (NDO) mixed all kinds of administrative records. They used data collected for diverse purposes and managed by private and public actors. These databases have different levels of quality, and some were unknown to many Colombians. In other words, it is no longer a matter of “finding” vulnerable people in the areas affected by poverty but of “taking advantage” of the personal data that we are leaving in our interaction with different institutions.

The construction of the Master Information Database used to assign the Solidarity Income program

The experiment ended up opening the Pandora’s box of the Colombian government information systems and showing their dependence on the private sector. When the NDO published the list of beneficiaries, many citizens reported inclusion errors regarding non-existent and expired ID cards.

The NDO’s response was to dismantle the database and deliver it to the National Civil Registry for deduplication. This process resulted in nearly 17,000 records with inconsistencies. After the incident, the NDO assured that the errors were inconsequential because the banks would verify the identity of the recipient before making a transaction. Also, in the case of communities with no access to financial services, the public agency used databases of prisons and the Forensic Medicine Institute to deduplicate IDs that were marked in those databases as deceased. This situation made clear that the State registries have serious quality problems and exposed a public policy reliant on the indiscriminate use of databases. How many people were unfairly excluded in the crosschecks with databases of uneven quality? We will never know. However, we can analyze the narrative behind the Solidarity Income. The bureaucracy is using these data-intensive solutions to avoid a political discussion that involves deciding who should be eligible for social redistribution in a time of crisis, the consequences for the lives of those excluded, and the alternatives we could offer them.

The selection of beneficiaries in the South, considering the high levels of poverty, unemployment, informality, and inequality, are particularly arbitrary results of data-based mechanisms. This practice of targeting implies a form of violence for people who are left out. Why did the NDO draw a line between potential beneficiaries in a pandemic on 8.7 million families when there are 17 million at risk of falling into poverty? This question requires a political discussion that depends on transparency and participation.

Line of vulnerability levels according to Sisbén necessary to apply for Solidarity Income

In this case, the state is taking away people’s agency to demand their social rights and actively participate in the political discussion. Data is not the reality but the representation of the politics of government and the social inequalities that shape it. The communities in poverty could be easily invisibilized or misrepresented by that system. The Solidarity Income's design makes the enforcement of citizens’ rights impossible. Those affected will hardly be able to request that information be corrected, obtain information on decision procedures, and challenge the results. Neither are they allowed to actively participate in the construction of the social policy that gives them agency in an emergency crisis.

Table 1 - Comparison between Solidarity Income and other transfer programs that used Sisbén III

Technocrats are hiding behind data and technological solutions to deny people the agency to participate in the state’s decisions, to call out injustice, and to claim the protection of their social rights. Hence, they call citizen complaints “myths” or deny the agency of outspokenly critical citizens by asserting that they are not deserving beneficiaries because the databases do not lie, so “there are no mistakes”. In other words, we are facing a government that unilaterally claims to know the people in need and denies their participation in the process. The government even points out how wrong the protesting voices are: they are being “manipulated” or “they want to skip the line”. In short, it is about using technologies and data to avoid having political discussions.

In conclusion, the Solidarity Income is an example of the worrying future of social policy in which people have fewer mechanisms to demand their rights from the State. It is also the evidence that the “true” beneficiaries will emerge from the data trail that we are inadvertently leaving behind and not from an exercise in active citizenship. The government sells the program as an innovation, but it was nothing more than a great experiment to roll out a data-intensive social policy. Thus, the State will automatically determine, through third-party data and in a non-transparent way, the peoples' “deservedness” of social benefits. A policy designed not to include but to eliminate “inclusion errors” and one in which citizens could not challenge the results. In other words, the government is constructing a dark system that will use as much data as possible to find the fewest possible beneficiaries.

Related learning resources

Country case studies - Impact to social protection access in light of the pandemic

Location

More about our partner

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Type of abuse

Benefits claimants

Content

Stories

Media

Summary

In response to the pandemic, the Colombian National Development office devised an unconditional cash transfer programme in only two weeks. The beneficiary selection process, which was solely based on data already held by the government, remains shrouded in obscurity.

Open Letter to Facebook and Google

tech-admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 15:49:02 +0000

Target Profile

Google

Facebook

Audiences and Purpose

We campaign for solutions

Change

We are building a global movement

Content

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Summary

Privacy International is part of a 60+ coalition calling on Facebook and Google to provide equal and better transparency regarding political advertising on their platforms globally.

Media

Key points

We believe it is necessary for both Google and Facebook to:

Accelerate the expansion of full transparency tools to all countries where you operate to ensure that the least favoured countries benefit from the same level of transparency as the most favoured countries
Develop, and make public, a plan of action setting out commitments and related timescales to roll out full transparency tools globally
Disclose the full array of criteria, both past and present, used to select countries qualifying for higher transparency standards

This letter is also available in Spanish.

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Pichai,

In the past few years, you have pioneered important transparency tools to help your platform users understand, learn about and contextualise the political advertising they see. We agree that advertiser verification processes and ad repositories are key safeguards against online manipulation and misinformation. However, we are saddened to observe that these benefits have not been equally distributed among your global user base.
Each platform operates fluctuating and often widely differing transparency standards for different countries. While some users benefit from seeing political advertising in an ad repository, others do not. Where some users are offered detailed information about a political ad, others are not. There are no legitimate or otherwise publicly disclosed reasons justifying this difference in treatment.
The combined effect of these inconsistent policies is to create a two-tiered user base within each platform, with a wide regulatory gap separating the transparency haves and have-nots. We first highlighted these problems in 2019. While some progress has been made since, we are disappointed to conclude that the transparency divide persists.
Online transparency should not be a privilege of the few, but the right of all. To that end, the changes we believe are necessary are as follows:

Accelerate the expansion of full transparency tools to all countries where you operate to ensure that the least favoured countries benefit from the same level of transparency as the most favoured countries
Develop, and make public, a plan of action setting out commitments and related timescales to roll out full transparency tools globally
Disclose the full array of criteria, both past and present, used to select countries qualifying for higher transparency standards

The above changes, which we believe to be fair and reasonable, are only a starting point to begin to correct the current platform-created inequality between users. By contrast, the benefits are conclusive: heightened transparency standards for millions of users worldwide, and increased legitimacy of online political advertising for the sake of fair and informed decision-making by voters.
We urge you to take responsibility as two of the most influential platforms in online political campaigning, and empower users and voters with heightened ads transparency.

Yours sincerely,

Access Now
Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC)
Aliansi Jurnalis Independen/Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI)
Amnesty International
ApTI
Article 19
Artículo 19 México y Centroamérica
Asociación por los Derechos Civiles
Asociación para una Ciudadanía Participativa, ACI Participa
Associação Data Privacy Brasil de Pesquisa
Asociación para el Progreso de las Comunicaciones (APC)
Association for International Affairs (AMO) in Prague
Association pour le Developpement Integré et la Solidarité Interactive (ADISI-C)
Citizen D
Centre for Independent Journalism Malaysia (CIJ-M)
Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)
Civil Liberties Union for Europe
Bytes for All (B4A)
Datos Protegidos
Defend Democracy
Dejusticia
Democracy Reporting International (DRI)
Derechos Digitales
Digital Rights Foundation
ELSAM
Electronic Frontier Finland
Electronic Frontier Norway
epicenter.works
EU Disinfo Lab
Fundación Acceso
Fundación Huaira de Quito-Ecuador
Fundación Internet Bolivia
Fundación Karisma
Freedom Forum
Free Media Movement (FMM)
Global Forum for Media Development
Global Witness
Hiperderecho
Homo Digitalis
Instituto Brasileiro de Defesa do Consumidor
InternetLab
Intervozes - Coletivo Brasil de Comunicação Social
IPANDETEC Centroamérica
Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL)
Laboratorio de Datos y Sociedad (DATYSOC)
Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)
Media Institute of Southern Africa MISA- Zimbabwe
Media Matters for Democracy
Merit Legal Advocacy & Human Rights Initiative (MELAHRI)
OBSERVACOM
Paradigm Initiative (PIN)
Privacy International
R3D: Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales
SFLC.in
Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV)
Sursiendo, Comunicación y Cultura Digital AC
TEDIC
The Tor Project
Unwanted Witness
Usuarios Digitales
Venezuela Inteligente
Who Targets Me
World Wide Web Foundation
Xnet

Repeating Image and Text

More about our partner

La Asociación por los Derechos Civiles

The Association for Civil Rights (ADC) is a non-governmental organisation based in Buenos Aires that promotes civil and social rights in Argentina and other Latin American countries. It was founded in 1995 with the aim of fostering a legal and institutional culture to guarantee fundamental rights, based on respect for the constitution and democratic values.

Country of Operation

Argentina

Region of Operation

Asociación por los Derechos Civiles

Website

Founded in 2012, Unwanted Witness is a Ugandan-based civil society organisation that seeks to create secure, uncensored online platforms for human rights activists. It aims to contribute to good governance through effective online activism, networking and capacity-building. It also advocates for the strengthening of mechanisms related to freedom of expression and accountability.

Country of Operation

Uganda

Region of Operation

Africa

Website

Unwanted Witness

Our campaign

PI is campaigning for 1) platforms to give all users heightened ad transparency and 2) for transparency into targeting and funding of ads to be meaningful.

The role of social media and search platforms in political campaigning and elections has come under scrutiny. Concerns range from the spread of disinformation, to profiling of users without their knowledge, to micro-targeting of users with tailored messages, to interference by foreign entities, and more. Significant attention has been paid to the transparency of political ads, and more broadly to the transparency of online ads.

Notably, in the lead up to the 2019 EU Parliamentary elections Facebook, Google, and Twitter, as well as the Interactive Advertising Bureau and others, agreed to take a series of steps to prevent online disinformation on their respective platforms. These measures are reflected in a self-regulatory Code of Practice on Disinformation and the companies provided the European Commission with monthly updates on their progress.

PI is campaigning for 1) platforms to give all users heightened ad transparency and 2) for transparency into targeting and funding of ads to be meaningful.

Learn more

Karisma: What do we know about these 3 apps designed to deal with the pandemic

staff — Tue, 19 May 2020 16:40:00 +0000

Karisma: What do we know about these 3 apps designed to deal with the pandemic staff Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Our partners from Karisma in Colombia analysed three different technological solutions intending to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, finding vulnerabilities in them (in Spanish).

Link: https://web.karisma.org.co/que-sabemos-de-las-tres-herramientas-que-se-anuncian-como-soluciones-tecnologicas-para-el-manejo-del-covid-19/

Location

Related learning resources

Examples of Abuse

More about our partner

Tracking the Global Response to COVID-19

See more examples

Apps and Covid-19

Civil society's Covid response

Date

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Content

Educational

Stories

Presentación de información a la Relatoría Especial de Derechos Económicos, Sociales, Culturales y Ambientales (DESCA) de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) sobre la situación de los DESCA en la región

tech-admin — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 17:49:45 +0000

Date

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Language

Spanish

Audiences and Purpose

Content

Summary

PI y sus partners acogen el llamado de la Relatoría Especial de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) sobre la situación de los Derechos Económicos, Sociales, Culturales y Ambientales en la región.

Media

iachr sp cover.jpg

Key points

El uso de la tecnología y los datos para la realización de los derechos económicos, sociales, culturales y ambientales debe tener en cuenta desde el principio las salvaguardas y garantías del debido proceso.
Una postura firme contra la explotación de datos es esencial para cuestionar la dinámica de poder actual y garantizar la dignidad y la autonomía de las personas.

TEDIC, InternetLab, Derechos Digitales, la Fundación Karisma, Dejusticia, la Asociación por los Derechos Civiles y Privacy International acogen el llamado de la Relatoría Especial sobre Derechos Económicos, Sociales, Culturales y Ambientales (DESCA) de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) de enviar información para la elaboración del Informe Anual sobre DESCA del año 2019, que se presentará ante la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA) en 2020.

El objeto de este documento es describir acontecimientos ocurridos en la región en áreas claves de interés que los coautores de la presentación han observado en relación con la realización progresiva de los Derechos Económicos, Sociales, Culturales y Ambientales (DESCA), especialmente respecto al uso de datos y tecnología en conexión con el acceso y el goce de estos derechos.

El uso de la tecnología y los datos para la realización de los derechos económicos, sociales, culturales y ambientales plantea, entre otros puntos, interrogantes clave en relación con la protección, el respeto y la promoción del derecho a la privacidad consagrado en el artículo 11 de la Convención Americana sobre Derechos Humanos, en el artículo 17 del Pacto Internacional de Derechos Civiles y Políticos y en el artículo 12 de la Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos. Puesto que los sistemas que están siendo implementados interfieren con la privacidad de las personas, deben cumplir el principio de legalidad y, además, ser necesarios y proporcionales al objetivo legítimo que pretenden alcanzar. Aparte de la falta de protección de las personas y sus datos cuando interactúan con los sistemas implantados, éstos también tienen repercusiones en la no discriminación y la igualdad.

En su informe anual a la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas sobre el estado de bienestar digital y los derechos humanos, el Relator Especial de las Naciones Unidas sobre la extrema pobreza y los derechos humanos presentó tres observaciones que, como se destaca en las áreas de interés descritas en esta presentación de información, también deberían ser tenidas en cuenta por la Relatoría Especial sobre Derechos Económicos, Sociales, Culturales y Ambientales (DESCA), incluido que los gobiernos corren el riego de “desembocar, sin ser conscientes de ello, en una distopía de bienestar digital”, que “las grandes empresas tecnológicas [a menudo llamadas ‘big tech’] actúan en una esfera en la que los derechos humanos están prácticamente ausentes”, y que “en lugar de obsesionarse con el fraude, el ahorro, las sanciones y las definiciones de eficiencia determinadas por el mercado, el punto de partida sea cómo transformar los presupuestos de asistencia social mediante la tecnología para mejorar el nivel de vida de las personas vulnerables y desfavorecidas”.

United Nations
- Human Rights Council
- Special Procedures
- Treaty bodies
- Universal Periodic Reviews
African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
EU Fundamental Rights Agency
National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs)

Our campaign

Rising concerns around austerity, transparency, efficiency and financial management have fed into a narrative of technology as a magic cure-all to socio-economic and political issues.

Almost all of us will, at some point in our lives, interact with the state to ask for some form of benefit. Whether you are a child relying on the assistance of child services, or you're sick and need healthcare, or you receive unemployment benefits, or you're disabled and need support, or you need financial assistance to pay rent, or you're retired and receive a pension.

Rising concerns around austerity, transparency, efficiency and financial management have fed into a narrative of technology as a magic cure-all to socio-economic and political issues. Newly established or reformed social protection programmes have gradually become founded and reliant on the collection and processing of vast amounts of personal data; often access and management is tied to the provision of unique identifier; and increasingly the models for decision-making include data exploitation and components of automated-decision making and profiling.

We work with others to ensure protection of and stop the exploitation of patient data because accessing reproductive healthcare should not require giving up your human rights, including privacy.

As access to reproductive healthcare becomes increasingly digitalised, companies and governments must ensure that the digital systems are built with people's human rights considered and protected.

There has been a notable increase in the digitalisation of health initiatives across the world. Accessing reproductive healthcare oftentimes requires interacting with a digitalised system that in some way collects vast amounts of personal information. For example, digital initiatives such as SMS appointment scheduling, remote access to care and counselling, health workers using a mobile phone to track an individual pregnant mother over the cycle of pregnancy, or a child over his/her cycle of immunization, and the use of mobile applications, sensors, wearable devices and others, all collect personal information.

But those developing these systems do not always consider the impact they will have on those who will use the systems, and how best to protect the information once it's collected.

The absence of human rights considerations, including privacy, in the implementation of these types of services can cause short- and long-term harm to the people trying to access the services.

This campaign aims to bring attention to digital health initiatives that have failed to consider the impact of these systems, and how to ensure they protect and respect the rights of those they serve.

We advocate for changes to be made to those systems and for the development of future systems to take a human rights-based approach. Like in many other sectors, technology can help and contribute to improving the rights of people. But with it also come risks, especially if a system is poorly designed, whether intentionally or not.

Learn more

Accessing public services should not mean signing up to systems of surveillance.

Being in a vulnerable situation should not involve greater exposure to government and corporate surveillance.

Migrants are bearing the burden and losing agency in their migration experience: their fate is being put in the hands of systems that are feeding the surveillance and data exploitation ecosystem.

Accessing social protection programmes should not mean signing up to systems of surveillance.

Being able to assert who we are and what claims we have can be empowering. But identity checks are increasingly conducted and required, both with and without our knowledge.

The data generated through peoples' use of social media becomes valuable intelligence to others, who want to monitor, profile, and manipulate.

Automated decision-making, about people, from people's data, will shape their lives -- what they have access to, what they can do, and what they may become.

Data Protection laws seek to protect people's data by providing individuals with rights over their data, imposing rules on the way in which companies and governments use data, and establishing regulators to enforce the laws.

Our fight

Safeguarding Peoples' Dignity

The promises made with innovation have not been enjoyed by all equally. Innovative solutions can be designed to empower and serve individuals and communities, rather than state and corporate power. A new approach to data and technology must be established to make this a reality.

Realise Our Rights to Live with Dignity

Governments are embracing systems that would enable them to progressively realise social, economic and cultural rights; many of these systems interfere with individuals’ privacy.

Submission to the Special Rapporteurship on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights (ESCER) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) regarding the situation of ESCER in the region

tech-admin — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 17:49:28 +0000

Date

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Audiences and Purpose

Content