UCI Law International Justice Clinic

REPORT: RESTRAINING THE PRIVATE SURVEILLANCE INDUSTRY’S GLOBAL ATTACK ON HUMAN RIGHTS & A ROADMAP TO A BAN

Clipping Pegasus’s Wings

This website and its accompanying series of reports seeks to contribute to ongoing efforts to address and constrain the global threat the private spyware industry poses to international human rights. Our work focuses on products like Pegasus though the spyware threat is goes well beyond one single company or malware. We aim to highlight a range of work on the digital surveillance.

Basics of Pegasus

Spyware is, in essence, malicious software that enables an attacker to secretly infect a targeted individual’s device to access information stored on or connected with the device without the person’s authorization. Because people use their mobile devices in every aspect of their lives, for personal, professional, financial, medical, entertainment and other purposes, the intrusive nature of technologies with such enormous power is particularly alarming.

Pegasus’s impact on human rights

The global proliferation of spyware highlights the importance of international human rights law, which provides a legal framework for the fight against its use. The accretion of norms helps us understand and
address emerging human rights issues caused by digital surveillance.

Corporate Responsibility

The private actors that are part of the private surveillance ecosystem and are, in principle, subject to existing law and regulation of countries and areas where they are headquartered and where they do business. In addition to these hard laws, state obligations and corporate responsibility are detailed by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in the Age of Transnational Surveillance: Judicial Interpretation and Legislative Solutions

 This paper discusses the history of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 and the development of the “entire tort” doctrine, argues that this approach runs counter to the text and purpose of the FSIA, and recommends a legislative solution to close the loophole which has granted foreign states immunity for conduct for which they should answer.