Tech tracking of rights violations
The widespread use of digital technology – including satellite
imagery, body cameras and smart phones – is fast becoming a new tool in
monitoring and capturing human rights violations worldwide.
Singling out the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs),
the UN Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions Christof Heyns says: “We
have all seen how the actions of police officers and others who use
excessive force are captured on cell phones and lead to action against
the perpetrators.”
Billions of people around the world now carry a powerful weapon to
capture such events in their pockets, he said.
“The fact that this is well-known can be a significant deterrent to
abuses,” Heyns said, in a report to the 29th session of the 47-member
Human Rights Council (UNHCR).
Heyns said the hardware and software that produce and transmit
information in the digital space can play an increasing role in the
protection of all human rights, including the right to life, by
reinforcing the role of ‘civilian witnesses’ in documenting rights
violations.
In his report, Heyns urged the UN system and other international
human rights bodies to “catch up” with rapidly developing innovations in
human rights fact-finding and investigations.
“The digital age presents challenges that can only be met through the
smart use of digital tools,” he said.
Smart use
Javier El-Hage, General Counsel at the New York-based Human Rights
Foundation (HRF), told IPS that HRF can corroborate the special
rapporteur’s findings that ICTs, like cellphone cameras or even
satellite imagery, play a key role in documenting extrajudicial
executions.
From democratic societies like Germany or the United States where
‘civilian witnesses’ documenting instances of police brutality and
extrajudicial executions create an effective check on law enforcement
abuse, to societies under competitive authoritarian regimes like
Kazakhstan or Venezuela where witnesses themselves can face
extrajudicial execution for filming police brutality, ICTs play a huge
role in documenting this egregious type of human rights violation, he
said.
“Even in North Korea, the world’s most repressive and tightly closed
society, satellite imagery has long helped determine the exact location
and population estimates of prison camps, and recently helped uncover a
disturbing case of executions by firing squad, where executioners used
anti-aircraft machine guns.”
In his report, Heyns told the UNHRC, the hardware and software that
produce and transmit information in the digital space can play an
increasing role in the protection of all human rights, including the
right to life, by reinforcing the role of ‘civilian witnesses’ in
documenting rights violations.
He said, various organizations are developing alert applications that
journalists, human rights defenders and others can use to send an
emergency message (along with GPS co-ordinates) to their friends and
colleagues, if they feel in immediate danger.
“New information tools can also empower human rights investigations
and help to foster accountability where people have lost their lives or
were seriously injured,” the Special Rapporteur said.
The use of other video technologies, ranging from CCTV cameras to
body-worn “cop cams,” can further contribute to filling information
gaps.
Resources such as satellite imagery to verify such videos, or
sometime to show evidence of violations themselves, is also an important
dimension, he noted.
But despite the many advantages offered by ICTs, Heyns said, it would
be short-sighted not to see the risks as well.
Privacy violations
“Those with the power to violate human rights can easily use peoples’
emails and other communications to target them and also to violate their
privacy,” he said.
The fact that people can use social media to organize spontaneous
protests can lead authorities to perceive a threat – and to over-react.
Moreover, there is a danger that what is not captured on video is not
taken seriously. “We must guard against a mind-set that ‘if it is not
digital it did not happen,’” he stressed.
El-Hage told IPS his Foundation also agrees with the special
rapporteur that ICTs are a double-edged sword, because through them,
governments can “easily access the emails and other communications” of
law-abiding citizens, especially political opponents, journalists and
human rights defenders, “to target them and violate their privacy.”
HRF has recently denounced the cases of targeted surveillance and
persecution against pro-democracy activists Hisham Almiraat in Morocco
and Waleed Abu AlKhair in Saudi Arabia, and was among the organizations
that submitted a white paper to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of
Expression to inform his own report on the way ‘encryption’ and
‘anonymity’ can protect both the rights to privacy and free speech.
In his report, Heyns also cautioned that not all communities, and not
all parts of the world, are equally connected, and draws special
attention to the fact that “the ones that not connected are often in
special need of protection.”
“There is still a long way to go for all of us to understand fully
how we can use these evolving and exciting, but in some ways also scary
new tools to their best effect,” Heyn said, pointing out that not all
parts of the international human rights community are fully aware of the
power and pitfalls of digital fact-finding.
- IPS |