Session
Digital Rights Foundation
Nighat Dad, Asia Pacific Group, Civil Society
Apar Gupta David Kaye Erica Moret Nighat Dad
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Targets: 9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Roundtable
The session aims to highlight emerging themes about an issue that has remained under-discussed in global policy circles. Keeping in view this, it would be useful to have a few experts in the roundtable format to allow them enough time to talk about regional nuances. Furthermore, the question-and-answer/comments session towards the end will help international audience working on similar issues to ask questions from the speakers and share perspective on the discussion being held there.
In July 2021, an investigation by the Forbidden Stories (an international journalism consortium) and Amnesty International revealed how a spyware named Pegasus was used to target 189 journalists, 85 human rights defenders, over 600 politicians and government officials (including cabinet ministers and diplomats) across the globe. Following these revelations, there has been a global push towards accountability of surveillance technology. Rights groups have called for a complete ban on these tools with some seeking accountability of the government authorities and private companies for enabling their misuse. US took the lead in blacklisting NSO group and three other cyber-surveillance companies while the UK and France launched the Pall Mall Process in February 2024 to start conversation on ethical oversight of these technologies. Despite this, surveillance remains a booming industry. Over 500 companies continue to develop, market and sell surveillance tools to Governments, some of which have been acquired by around 65 governments globally, including in the Global South.While the global discussions on ethical considerations for surveillance technology have predominantly focused on the Global North, very limited conversations have taken place from the Global South’s perspective despite reported use of similar tech in those regions. The proposed workshop is an attempt to bridge the gap and highlight the Global South’s perspective on surveillance technology, its wider socioeconomic and political implications on the region. Through a discussion among two civil society civil representatives and one industry and the government representative each, it will also unpack the challenges with implementing the Global North’s solutions and attempt to identify nuanced solutions for mitigating risks from surveillance
Onsite moderator will have enough support to interact with online speakers and attendees. Keeping enough time in mind to ask question to online speaker and address questions from online attendees.