- Discussion around strategies being deployed by EU-based journalists and NGOs to tackle surveillance exports from the EU. The technology being exported and/or financed may be (and in some cases, has been) used by authoritarian regimes and security forces to perpetuate serious harms and abuses against individuals and human rights defenders.
- Enable advocates, researchers and activists to undertake advanced research into EU-based financing and/or export of highly intrusive surveillance technologies.
- Develop a shared perspective on the most effective safeguards (human rights risk assessments vs. data protection stipulations vs. conditional funding vs. monitoring mechanisms)
Moderator Nour Haidar is a lawyer at Privacy International currently working on projects tackling government exploitation of data privacy. Nour will be joined (virtually) by Edin Omanovic. Edin is Advocacy Director at PI and had worked on a number of research projects to reveal the sources of funding for transfers of surveillance from the EU and the US to the rest of the world.
- The team from Privacy International will present the work they’ve done over the past 5 years to tackle the unregulated export, financing and donation of intrusive surveillance technologies from the EU. Will be presented research that have undertaken with partners and investigative journalists, from South America to Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Somalia and others.
- It will be provide e an in-depth workshop on the investigative techniques we relied on, and the types of open-source information that is available to researchers and advocates in this context.
- It will be facilitate a discussion around what kinds of safeguards we should be fighting for. Is it sufficient for inter-governmental bodies to require “human rights impact assessments” and to be more transparent about export controls and procurement. What are the potential harms of arguing that funders/donors should have continued or long-term involvement in the use of this technology? Where and how does this EU-based work intersect with work being done by groups in the MENA/SWANA region, and is this form of advocacy effective?
For more detalis about the event click here.