Dear Ben, in the Pegasus Committee of Inquiry, you pointed out in the hearing 21 June that ten years earlier you had also spoken in the EU Parliament about a report on surveillance. What exactly was that about?
My previous report 10 years ago in 2012 to the EU Parliament DROI (the human rights subcommittee of the foreign affairs committee) was about the ways to deal with European technology supporting authoritarian states repress their citizens in the Middle East after the Arab Spring. We discussed many different policy responses to this challenge including export controls and ways that Europe can create different technological ecosystems.
Your reference to the 10-year-old EP study was probably made because of continuities with today. Where do you see these?
As I mentioned during the hearing, the unwillingness to sufficiently respond to the needs of surveillance victims outside of Europe, has contributed to a market for surveillance inside of Europe. In terms of continuity, there has been a high degree of turnover among the companies doing surveillance, so lots of change in the relevant actors. A high degree of the regulatory and oversight burden is taken on by civil society and journalists, which suggests much is still to be done by government actors.
More broadly speaking, many of the measures suggested then, investing in decentralised human-rights based communications infrastructure, robust oversight and meaningful accountability. There is still much work to be done.… Weiterlesen