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Ever get the feeling you’re being followed?

Well, your fears may be justified, because new technology is making it easier than ever.

The use of facial recognition surveillance technology has expanded rapidly in recent years. Governments employ it to scan, identify, and profile people en masse.

They use it in Iran to spy on protests, in China to target people based on their ethnicity, and in Russia to curb political dissent. Around the world, facial recognition systems with artificial intelligence (AI) are employed to monitor and control us in public spaces.

And their use is spreading. Many countries, like Israel and the United Kingdom are planning to roll out even more.

The danger to our fundamental freedoms is clear: facial recognition surveillance technology amounts to mass surveillance. It undermines our privacy rights and threatens our rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.

It’s also a menace to our right to equality and freedom from discrimination. As with many newer technologies, facial recognition surveillance exacerbates existing structural inequalities and hits marginalized and vulnerable folks hardest. In short: the powerful have a new tool against the powerless.

Facial recognition surveillance tech is not compatible with international human rights law, and, among other things, is simply too dangerous and too powerful to be used in some circumstances without negative consequences for human rights.

This is why 180 rights groups and other experts have joined a new effort calling on governments and companies to stop using facial recognition surveillance tech in public spaces, and in migration and asylum contexts.

There is no safe-use case for this technology on our streets or at our borders.

We need governments to step up and ban facial recognition surveillance in these spaces, and companies to stop creating and using this powerful tool for surveillance purposes.

And we need laws, because hoping companies will do this on their own isn’t working. In 2020, some of the big tech companies pledged a moratorium on selling facial recognition surveillance tech, in response to human rights concerns, but we’re already seeing at least one company rolling back on that commitment.

The good news is some authorities seem to be getting the message. The latest draft of the European Union’s AI Act shows an increased commitment to banning facial recognition surveillance in public spaces.

We have a right to walk around in public places without being followed as if we were criminal suspects. We have a right to gather as we choose. We have a right to live freely.

We should not allow our governments to have tools that make it easier for them to abuse our rights.

What do you think about this technology? Please email me or contact me on Twitter, Mastodon, LinkedIn, or Bluesky with your thoughts.

The Chinese government really doesn’t want anyone talking about its appalling human rights record – particularly not right now, when it’s seeking another term on UN Human Rights Council.

Yes, that’s right: another term. Beijing quite incomprehensibly managed to get voted in before.

But still, the Chinese government is especially keen these days to silence critics as a new election looms. At home, it arbitrarily detains or forcibly disappears them. Abroad, it harasses them. At the United Nations, it’s telling member states to boycott public events highlighting its abuses.

Last month at the UN General Assembly, for example, China’s UN mission even wrote to each UN member state to “strongly recommend your mission NOT to participate” in a side event on Xinjiang organized by the Atlantic Council, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International.

It’s good to know Beijing worries about us that much. It’s even better to know their plea was ignored: an audience of hundreds attended and heard details of the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, and possible UN responses.

One small, helpful response would be for countries to reject China’s bid to sit on the UN Human Rights Council again. The vote by the UN General Assembly on October 10 includes a slate for the Asia region of four candidates for four available seats, but even so, states still have a choice: they can still decide not vote for China.

That would be the best possible outcome for a serial rights violator that keeps trying to silence the truth.

(written by Chiara Cera)

When it comes to violence and conflict, children are often among the most affected.

At least 30 people have reportedly been killed and more than 4,000 people had to flee their homes in Ain el-Helweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, since clashes erupted between armed factions.

Additionally, these armed groups have occupied all eight schools in the camp run by UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

This puts the education of 11,000 children at risk.

True, a tenuous ceasefire has held since September 14, and last Friday the armed factions left the occupied schools. But fighting could resume any time.

The use of schools by armed groups is a serious violation of international humanitarian and human rights law. Schools should not be battlegrounds as access to education represents the possibility of a better future for everyone.

(compiled by Emily Palomo) 

• Global demand for universal Social Security (HRW) 
• Haiti crisis: Can Kenyan police officers defeat the gangs? (BBC News) 
• Brazil expels illegal settlers from Indigenous lands in Amazon (The Guardian) 
• Rights reforms urgently needed in Vietnam (HRW) 
• Southeast Asia: Why is free speech not a priority? (DW) 
• WHO recommends second malaria vaccine for children, rollout early next year (Al Jazeera) 
• Countries pledge to raise $12 billion to fund coral reef protection (Reuters)