Agenda 2: Human Rights

Infringement by Technological
Development
Introduction
Human Rights in simple words refer to basic minimum rights that a person
should be able to exercise at all points of time. Technological Development
refers to improvement of current technology or creation of new means and
inventions that eases work and encourage growth. Technological Development
is seen to play the role in expanding human rights by widening opportunities
for people to explore, express and empower people. However every action is
also seen to have an adverse effect. Thus, it is prudent to recognize that
technological development is also a major threat to Human Rights.

If we look at the major problems in curtailment or infringement of human

rights internet and its related services have been at top of the list. The issue of
information technology advances and their implications for society has been
widely discussed in different ways throughout history; from Huxley’s Brave
New World to Orwell’s 1984 dystopia, the preoccupation that technology
would be used by governments as a tool for surveillance has been significantly
present in literature and philosophy. However, from the 1970s to today this
‘theoretical’ debate has become a real-life issue, more so since the NSA
scandals of 2013 and a much recent incident of Facebook data leaks via
Cambridge Analytica.

The revelations of the Snowden files and the realisation that governments
were using information technology for surveillance of their citizens re-sparked
the debate of security and privacy as opposing rights, leading to world-wide
petitions for harder restrictions, legislation and more transparency and
control.

Today, government use of technology and the lack of transparency in said use
is one of the most talked about issues worldwide, with more and more
information coming in every day revealing new details about surveillance
activities. Relations between world leaders, national security, and international
peace, are some of the elements that have been threatened by the disclosure
of technology and surveillance-related programs.
The Cambridge Analytica leaks are also a major issue relevant in international
forum. It is regarding invasion of privacy by social media sites and whether
they should be allowed to read personal data of people. If yes, then are they
allowed to share it with others? The leaks showed how Facebook data was
leaked to UK based firm Cambridge Analytica. This data was utilised by the firm
to influence election results and campaigns in the recent US presidential
elections. It is also suspected that several other elections around the globe
were influenced by them.

History
The Cold War could arguably be termed as the starting point of this problem.
The era marked several competitions between the United States and USSR
over technological dominance. This quest resulted increase in spying between
the two nations. The governments of both the countries were involved in
surveillance of communications of their own as well as foreign citizens. In
1970’s Watergate scandal broke out in United States which involved use of CIA
and FBI in tracking US citizens activities by monitoring their communication.

In 2001, after the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York,
the Bush Administration drafted and approved the Patriot Act, a law that
allowed the US Government to use the technologies at their disposal to
conduct surveillance and intercept communications from individuals without a
warrant. This caused significant controversy on the grounds it put people’s
constitutional rights at risk

However, the biggest escalation in controversy can be found between 2010

and 2013, with the revelations made by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden.
These revealed the existence of massive surveillance programs that were being
carried out by the US in collaboration with the UK, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, in what was called the “Five Eyes” initiative. The National Security
Agency was dedicating human and technological resources to collect massive
amounts of data not only from American citizens, but also from world leaders
(such as Dilma Rousseff and Angela Merkel) and UN officials, and in the
process, was obtaining information from other countries’ intelligence services
overseas. However, the ‘Five Eyes’ operation countries were not the only ones
found guilty of using technology to invade other nations’ privacy: China is one
of the countries, which is most often accused of hacking outside its borders
(India, Taiwan), as well as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Pakistan
and Cyprus.

The programs revealed by Snowden as well as Wikileaks started a conversation

unheard of before: a discussion on technology and privacy, and the
governments’ legitimacy in surveillance activities. These were echoed all over
the world, particularly in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, but also Russia and
Turkey whose diplomats had been spied on during the G-20 summit in 2009 as
per claims made by Snowden. Apart from that common people were also spied
during these programs, this mounted a large scale public opinion against these
surveillance programs.

Despite the public dislike for them, in many countries the programs were kept
running. In October 2013, the European Council issued a statement signed by
the 28 leaders highlighting the importance of intelligence gathering in the fight
against terrorism, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel even proposed the
creation of an intelligence service to “beat” the NSA

The UN General Assembly adopted resolution 68/167 in December 2013 on

“the right to privacy in the digital age”, reaffirming the existence of this right
and calling upon all states to respect the right and take measures to put an end
to violations. Reports were made on the matter, and panels for discussion
were established, until Resolution 28/16 appointed a 3-year special rapporteur
on the right to privacy to report on alleged violations on the right. The latest
report was published on March 8th, 2016 (A/HRC/31/64) in the 31st session of
the Human Rights Council , in which it was highlighted the obstacles in lacking
an international official definition of privacy, as well as praise for legislation
that tightened restrictions on surveillance projects and backdoors.

In recent times, the bigger debate over privacy has arisen because of Facebook
leaks. It was in context over the investigation on role of the Russian
government in influencing US Presidential Elections , it was discovered
Cambridge Analytica, a UK based firm illegally used Facebook to collect private
information regarding its users. It is believed the data was being recorded since
2014 and the purpose of obtaining this data was to influence the presidential
elections. The facebook has accepted full responsibility of the incident,
investigations are currently going on. But the issue has left facebook a scar, as
users have started withdrawing their accounts owning to the incident.

Digital Divide and Human Rights

One traditional human rights concern that has been aggravated by digital
technology is global inequality. This is caused by the lack of access to
technology, rather than technology itself. While those of us who live in the
digital ecosystem can’t remember what daily life is like without Internet
connectivity or our digital devices, the majority of people in the world have
zero digital experience. Globally, nearly six out of ten people are not connected
to the Internet. Even starker is the fact that roughly 65 percent of people in the
developing world do not yet use the Internet. And women generally have less
access to the Internet (another expression of gender inequality), as do people
living in rural areas.

These digital divides have the potential to significantly exacerbate existing

global inequality and lead to conditions where conflict is more likely. Nearly all
of the UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted recently depend on
expanding access to information and communications technology
infrastructure around the planet. But the prospect of reaching the UN goal of
universal Internet access in the developing world by 2020 does not look
realistic at the current rate. Narrowing the digital divide must be ranked as a
top human rights priority.

Technological Factors Leading To Curtailment

of Human Rights
1. Digitally Facilitated Repression
Digital technology can also facilitate repression. Authoritarian governments
unfortunately have caught up to and in many ways surpassed human rights
activists in their sophisticated use of digital technology. They now have
enhanced capacities to censor expression, block or filter access to
information, monitor online activity, and more effectively and efficiently
control populations than they did in the pre-digital world. Unfortunately,
digital technology has provided new comparative advantages to the most
sophisticated authoritarian systems.

Perhaps the most advanced version of cyber repression is seen in China

where a combination of digital tools for mass surveillance, censorship, and
social monitoring provide a rich and comprehensive means of social and
political control. In an “old school” dimension of its digital social-monitoring
system, China apparently employs two million Internet police who are
tasked with monitoring online activity of citizens and sifting through
millions of messages on social media and micro-blogging sites. This data is
compiled into government reports about the potential for social unrest and
is used to clamp down on political and social activity. Just in late February, it
was reported that 580 social media accounts were suspended by China’s
Cyberspace Administration after allegations that users ignored their social
responsibilities, abused their influence, and stained the honour of the state.

2. Surveillance in the name of National Security by

governments

Technology has exacerbated another problem from the pre-digital era:

human rights violations committed in the name of national security and
counterterrorism, even by democratic, human rights-respecting
governments. New generations of digital technology have brought many
significant changes to government capacities in law enforcement,
counterterrorism, and foreign surveillance. The human rights
implications of many of these new capacities were not fully appreciated
before they were put to use. But security agencies around the world
 have been unwilling to rein in those new capacities, despite our deeper
understanding of those implications.
Furthermore, in many countries facing terror threats, imposition of
vague and expansive cyber-related laws without adequately considering
or protecting human rights has led to erosion of some very basic human
rights principles (e.g., that surveillance programs must be both
necessary and proportionate). Ambiguous, imprecise, and unnecessarily
intrusive counterterrorism laws have been replicated around the world
by governments of all stripes. Even governments that see themselves as
human rights champions have found it difficult to bring their
counterterrorism activities under the rule of law.

3. Cyber Warfare

In a world dominated by technological growth and advancement, attack on

information systems has become a legitimate cause of concern for security.
With the increasing importance of cyberspace, a number of risks have become
concurrent which not only jeopardizes the benefits that cyberspace can offer
but also pose a threat to the national security of a country. Cyber warfare may
include attempts to access, damage, undermine and sabotage another nation
or organization’s information through metadata acquisition, computer viruses,
and denial of service attacks.

Espionage is seen as a major threat that must be redeemed. These treats are
multi polar in nature and can be motivated from several directions and they
may include nation states, non state actors, proxies, intelligence agencies. It
must be noted that these attack may also be politically, socially or religiously
motivated. The internet is also becoming a tool for military activities and cyber
security has become more central to national and international security.

Cybercriminals route their communications through a variety of jurisdictions to

avoid the detection of their crimes and identities. Cyber counterintelligence is
important in keeping sensitive information safe and preventing subversion and
sabotage. Another rising trend is the perpetuation of cyber- attacks by
nationalist groups, such as when Israeli 10 hackers organised together to
launch an attack against Palestine in October 2000 during a period of conflict.
DOS attacks were launched on computers owned by Palestinian resistance
organizations (Hamas) and Lebanese resistance organizations (Hezbollah). Anti-
Israel hackers responded by crashing several Israeli web sites by flooding them
with bogus traffic. In March 2013, South Korea’s cyberspace came under a
wave of cyber-attacks. Information systems of major broadcasting
corporations and banks were hacked. According to an estimate, it cost South
Korea £500m. The European Defence Agency (EDA) is progressing towards a
more consistent level of cyber defence capability across the European Union.

4. Terrorism

The recent trend in numerous countries to survey their populations with the
excuse of preventing violence from terrorist groups has allowed governments
worldwide to monitor the activity of their citizens online. The violation of
digital rights has led to abuses in the physical world, “such as arbitrary
detention and forced disappearances”. The legality behind these actions will
depend from state to state. Practitioners have noted the importance of
monitoring systems in order to be able to gain evidence of supposed abuses
with regards to freedom of expression and rights to privacy.

Terrorism in this context can not only be related to internet, because weapon
systems and arms have also witnessed a technological development, there is a
large scale threat of this technology going in the hands of terrorist in the
regions where there is high instability, as a result conventional terrorist attacks
are still a major threat.

5. Role of Media
Another important aspect in the context of national security leaks is the
role of the press in upholding individual rights and civil liberties. Individual
journalists entangled in controversial leak stories have always defended
their public duty to hold governments accountable for any violation of
fundamental human rights and democratic processes and have striven in
order to gain access to public records, meetings and court rooms and
disclose the acquired information. There are many cases, however, where
journalists have been accused of exploiting the treasure trove of
information secured through their cooperation with whistle-blowers or
otherwise for their own personal benefit rather than the common good. In
the Snowden case, there have been many speculations regarding lucrative
business deals with publishers and movie producers signed by some of the
journalists Edward Snowden has partnered with. The media involvement of
multibillionaires like the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar in launching a new
media organization, First Look Media, dedicated to “fearless and
adversarial” journalism and in funding the so called crypto insurgency
aimed at the US intelligence apparatus is being viewed with increasing
scepticism by many traditional advocates of press independence.

6. Social Networking Sites

The recent happenings of data leaks simply means that it is not only the
government, but social networking that people need to be aware of. In case
of Facebook we must understand that it was not the site that caused
misuse if data, it was just a source of obtaining data by another firm
“Cambridge Analytica” which misused the data. The thing to focus upon is
that facebook is just one social networking; data security of hundreds of
these sites should be checked to prevent these happenings. Other
applications like Whatsapp now have a feature called “End to End
Encryptions” meaning that these cannot be read by any third party even
Whatsapp (owned by Facebook) themselves. However, there are serious
doubts about working of this measure.

7. Bloc Positions
 While the Human Rights Council has discussed surveillance and other
internet issues on a regular basis, numerous countries have publicaly stated
their support for a free and open internet in the council. However, these
same countries have passed draconian laws which have allowed them to
survey their citizens on a massive scale. This has meant that while a public
position on human rights and technological development is easily available,
this public position is contrary to the domestic legislative actions of the
country. In the third committee of the General Assembly, SOCHUM, Brazil’s
representative to the United Nations stated that “human rights should
prevail irrespective of the medium and therefore need to be protected both
offline and online”. While the committee passed the resolution without a
vote, it was noted international human rights mechanisms need to be
improved to ensure the privacy and freedom of expression threatened
nationally and internationally by mass surveillance activities conducted by
the United States.

Questions to Consider
1. What practical measures can member states take to ensure that the
private rights of their citizens are protected whilst considering growing
security concerns?
2. How can individuals ensure that their rights to privacy are protected
against large scale government programs?
3. Is it possible for the UN to protect the right to privacy of individuals
without encroaching upon national sovereignty?
4. How can the internet be kept free and open whilst considering individual
privacy concerns?
5. How can governments protect their civilians without disturbing their
privacy online? Or to what extent can government use its surveillance
facilities to monitor citizens activity?
 6. How can data on social networking sites be secured from getting leaked
to a third party agency?
7. How to safeguard Human Rights such as ‘Right To Life’ owning to
technological developments in defence and arms sector?
8. Is it possible to make sure that leaked data won’t be shared with other
governments or some other party as it compromises a person’s rights?

Research Links
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-assange-wikileaks/timeline-wikileaks-saga-
idUSTRE7B40NB20111205

https://www.reuters.com/article/facebook-cambridge-analytica/timeline-cambridge-
analytica-lists-events-leading-to-facebook-data-row-idUSL3N1R45J1

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-wikileaks-manning-timeline/timeline-the-united-
states-and-anti-secrecy-activists-idUSL1N0G00K120130730

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/terrorists-and-internet

https://www.unodc.org/documents/frontpage/Use_of_Internet_for_Terrorist_Purposes.pdf

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session29/_layouts/15/WopiFra
me.aspx?sourcedoc=/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session29/Documents/A.HRC.29.
32_AEV.doc&action=default&DefaultItemOpen=1