Long-awaited IACHR report welcomes Al Sur recommendations on big data and cyber surveillance

In late January 2020, the Office of the Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights (ESCER) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published the long-awaited report "Business and Human Rights: Inter-American Standards."

In its launch, the Special Rapporteur on ESCER, Soledad García Muñoz, stated that "as this is the first time that this issue has been addressed in a comprehensive, direct and general manner by the inter-American system, the report constitutes a tool with enormous potential for improving and strengthening legislation, practices and public policies that seek to address human rights violations and abuses in the context of business operations, to help strengthen preventive and due diligence actions, to enhance the accountability of States and businesses involved in such situations, as well as to ensure access to effective remedies for victims."

We celebrate the publication of the report as it welcomed two of our work documents. One is "Business and human rights: regional report on Technology, Big Data and Cyber ​​Surveillance," presented especially for the occasion. The other is "Recommendations for the transparency and anti-corruption in the acquisition and use of surveillance technologies by the American States" written for the Summit of the Americas in 2018.

In the report from the Special Rapporteurship ESCER, there is a complete chapter on "States and companies in the field of information and communication technologies," where they explicitly deal with "business activities in the field of technology, online services, big data and cyber-surveillance regarding the enjoyment of human rights." In this sense, the Special Rapporteurship ESCER recognizes "the concern of the use of big data without the correlative adoption of adequate checks and balances, which may violate the human rights of people," as well as the surveillance tools that can provide "greater power for those who acquire or manage these technologies for purposes that can deteriorate, restrict and violate human rights. "

In particular, we highlight that the report emphasizes the lack of transparency and, many times, the corruption involved in the sale of surveillance technologies by companies to our States:

"283. Among the actions that States must take into account are, for example, the revision or adoption of clear legal frameworks that empower and set the conditions for the lawful use of this type of technology based on democratic values ​​and human rights norms, as well as the existence of due process safeguards, transparency, independent audit and investigation and effective accountability. The IACHR and its Special Rapporteurship ESCER also take into account information on the fragmentation of regulatory systems in this area and the institutional weaknesses to comply with those provisions in force as one of the greatest challenges in the region, and they also acknowledge that there are concerns about the lack of transparency, and even corruption, and reduced or no spaces for social participation in the state instances that make decisions in this area, in particular regarding acquisition and operation surveillance technologies."

For Al Sur members, it is an advance that this type of discussion is included in the report. This gives civil society an instrument to advocate in the use of technologies within the human rights framework and democratic transparency standards. As it is recognized by the Special Rapporteurship ESCER, technologies must be "adopted and implemented transparently and facilitating social control, both of state management and private management in matters related to the guarantee of human rights in this field, including the extraterritorial sphere".