TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
A number of secretive companies have sold highly invasive spyware to countries despite their record of grave human rights abuse. The spyware is known as a dual-use good, defined by the European Commission as a good that can have both civilian and military applications.
While governments contended that the software serves legitimate national security and intelligence gathering purposes, growing documentation has shown how governments are using digital spying tools designed for criminal investigations and counterintelligence to target human rights defenders and journalists.
In 2017, the Global Justice Clinic partnered with the Robert L. Bernstein Institute for Human Rights and Technology Law and Policy Clinic and with Amnesty International to launch a groundbreaking research to investigate legal accountability measures to address the state surveillance of human rights defenders.
project deliverables
As part of this partnership with Amnesty International, the Global Justice Clinic assisted efforts to hold the companies that produce malicious spyware accountable for the targeting of civil society actors and the resulting human rights violations.
- Israel: ‘Rogue’ NSO Group must have licence revoked over controversial surveillance software (2018)
- Spyware firm buyout reaffirms urgent need for justice for targeted activists (2019)
- Israel: Amnesty International engages in legal action to stop NSO Group’s web of surveillance (2019)
- Stop NSO Group Exporting Spyware to Human Rights Abusers in Israel (2020)
This post reflects the research and work of the Global Justice Clinic and Amnesty International, not necessarily the views of NYU, NYU Law or the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.
