Human rights and technology (International)
Human Rights and Technology examines the complex relationship between advancements in technology and their impact on human rights globally. The rapid growth of the internet, social media, and artificial intelligence since 2000 has provided unique opportunities for human rights advocacy, enabling increased awareness and evidence gathering for human rights violations. Technology facilitates platforms for free expression and education, fostering connections among advocates and allowing marginalized voices to be amplified. However, these advancements also pose significant risks, particularly concerning privacy violations and the misuse of personal data by governments and corporations.
In many instances, technology can exacerbate inequalities, as biased algorithms disproportionately affect low-income and minority groups, influencing critical areas such as employment, criminal justice, and access to services. Furthermore, the spread of misinformation through social media can fuel conflict and hatred, exemplified by incidents where online platforms have contributed to real-world violence. As technology evolves, the challenge remains to navigate its applications ethically, ensuring that its benefits do not come at the cost of fundamental human rights. The ongoing discourse highlights the need for effective regulation and accountability in the tech industry to protect vulnerable populations from emerging threats.
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Subject Terms
Human Rights and Technology
The importance of technology in people’s lives has grown exponentially in the twenty-first century and plays an increasingly significant role in society. Since 2000, technological developments have included the massive growth in the use of the Internet, smartphones, and other high-tech devices; artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning; cloud computing; the introduction of Facebook and Twitter; and virtual reality. Between 2000 and 2022, the number of Internet users exploded from 700,000 to 5.3 billion, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the global population. These developments have been a double-edged sword to human rights around the globe. While technology has assisted in upholding human rights, it also has been used in ways that abuse these rights.
Background
The use of big data, gleaned from social media, crowd-sourced data, and tracking devices on vehicles, mobile phones, and other devices, has allowed human rights groups to better analyze trends in migration, recognize early signs of conflict, and provide quicker response time during humanitarian disasters. Social media, in particular, provides human rights advocates with a means of connecting with others around the world and keeping tabs on human rights abuses. Human rights advocates have an unprecedented ability to increase global awareness of abuses, provide evidence of those abuses, and gain support.
Technology has also advanced human rights with the development of online learning. For example, the Khan Academy offers videos, articles, and lessons to ten million unique users every month and is available in 190 countries. India’s largest app, BYJU, which focuses on math and science, has seven million mobile phone subscribers. Other companies, such as RoboTutor and Chimple, are developing open-source platforms that can offer educational opportunities to children who have no other access to school.
However, technology can also work against human rights, especially in the numerous ways that privacy can be invaded. Privacy is recognized as a fundamental right in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is enshrined in the constitution of more than 150 countries. However, advances in technology have significantly harmed people’s ability to protect their personal data, which can be misused by governments, corporations, and criminals.
Sometimes unwittingly, people give away personal information about what they buy, where they go, their health data and political views, as well as details about their friends and families. Repressive governments can use these breaches of personal data to advance their political position and stymie the opposition. Research has shown that authoritarian regimes aggressively use spyware to gain access to the private data of heads of state, diplomats, dissidents, academics, and journalists. Some governments rely heavily on the spread of misinformation to shape their country’s narrative. Troll farms and bots spread “fake news,” reaching millions of viewers via social media in a short time.
Overview
When technology violates human rights, it is usually the rights of minorities and lower socioeconomic classes. The algorithms that process big data may, in themselves, infringe on human rights because of coded-in biases. Lower-income zip codes in the United States are barraged with advertisements for high-rate loans and for-profit colleges. Some employers have begun to use algorithms to weed through job candidates, omitting those with a low credit score or a complicated health history. In some states, judges use algorithms to set bail amounts and sentencing, which disproportionately assign higher bail and longer sentences to people of color.
In a 2022 report, Amnesty International found that Facebook’s owner Meta was complicit in the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people by Myanmar’s military by supercharging the spread of anti-Rohingya hate speech. Meta’s algorithm focuses on engagement—the more a topic is discussed, the more likely it will appear in newsfeeds. When actors linked to the Myanmar military and extreme Buddhist monks flooded Facebook, online calls for violence turned tragically real. Meta was also criticized for not enforcing its own hate speech policy.
The increasing presence of digital technologies has, in fact, improved many people’s access to political, economic, and social rights by providing a platform for free speech and increasing their access to medical, financial, and governmental services. However, the very same technologies can be used as weapons in ways that contradict human rights. For example, Telegram, developed by a Russian dissident, allowed users to create encrypted group chats and was used effectively to orchestrate protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020. However, at the end of 2020, Telegram was being used by thousands of channels associated with the terrorist group ISIS, which the app removed with the help of Europol.
The intersection between human rights and technology is expected to only become more complicated in the future. The power of the large corporations that create new technologies is increasing, and governments are unsure of how to regulate them. When the US Senate called in Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Meta, to testify about Facebook’s misuse of data in 2018, the questions most senators asked revealed their ignorance of how the platform operates.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has implications for future wars and conflicts. Between 2001 and 2022, the United States launched more than fourteen thousand drones in its antiterrorist operations in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan, many resulting in civilian causalities. A new generation of weapons, legal autonomous weapons systems, operate much more independently to identify and strike a target. Russia has reportedly used an unmanned drone to launch kamikaze attacks on preprogrammed targets, and Ukraine has used semiautonomous drones against Russia. Calls to ban such weapons have increased, but on the international level, the United States and Russia have blocked attempts to regulate their use.
Bibliography
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Campbell, Eliza, and Michael Kleinman. “Global: Companies Must Act Now to Ensure Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence.” Amnesty International, 14 June 2023. www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/06/global-companies-must-act-now-to-ensure-responsible-development-of-artificial-intelligence/. Accessed 18 June 2023.
Hickin, Ruth. “How Are Today’s Biggest Tech Trends Affecting Our Human Rights?” World Economic Forum, 11 Dec. 2017, www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/how-are-today-s-biggest-tech-trends-affecting-human-rights/. Accessed 18 June 2023.
Mhlungu, Gugulethu. “How Artificial Intelligence Is Affecting Human Rights and Freedoms.” Global Citizen, 3 Jan. 2023, www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/artificial-intelligence-is-affecting-human-rights/. Accessed 18 June 2023.
“Technology and Human Rights.” Carr Center, Harvard University, carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/technology-human-rights. Accessed 18 June 2023.