Restraining the Private Surveillance Industry
NEW! We launched Clipping Pegasus’s Wing project, which highlights a range of work on spyware abuse.
We read, listen, think, and write and speak online. Actual and potential surveillance chills this process. Spyware, the most intrusive type of surveillance technology, enables an attacker secret and unlimited access to any data stored in and communication done through a mobile phone. Among many sources, reports by organizations such as Citizen Lab, Amnesty International, Mexico’s R3D, and ARTICLE 19 have highlighted the various ways in which spyware restricts the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
The Clinic is committed to the protection of freedom of opinion and expression. We work on projects to effectively restrain digital surveillance on a domestic and international level. The Clinic’s projects include research on avenues of advocacy, including litigation, vis-à-vis states, and a wide range of private actors – surveillance tool vendors, investors and suppliers of such vendors, and companies of which systems were or would be compromised. Among other work that the Clinic has done or coordinated:
- The Clinic hosted a four-part workshop on the spyware industry and how to constrain it in the spring of 2022. You may find a write-up of the proceedings here. A write-up of a follow-up event in November 2022, co-sponsored with Access Now, may be found here.
- Professor David Kaye has testified before the European Parliament’s PEGA Committee on the subject of human rights and spyware, which you may find here (and video here). He also testified before the Indian Supreme Court-appointed Technical Committee investigating Pegasus use by the Government of India, which may be found here.
- The Clinic helped prepare Professor Kaye’s 2019 Report to the Human Rights Council, as UN Special Rapporteur, on the private surveillance industry, which may be found here.
