Surveillance technology

In Turkey, where twenty years of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule has seen the country descend into authoritarianism, mainstream media is almost completely under Erdoğan’s control. Social media remains one of the only outlets for those opposing Erdoğan to voice their discontent. Since the 2013 Gezi protests, the AKP has been trying to control the narratives on social media by employing social media trolls: networks of fake accounts that disseminate propaganda for the AKP and targets the opposition. Studies show that these troll networks are becoming more sophisticated and are changing tactics. Fazıl Alp Akiş explains how.

Digital technology plays a key role in the armed conflict in Ukraine – as a tool for cyberattacks and digital protest, and as an accelerator for information and disinformation.

Choice architecture. Nudging. Manipulation. Whatever you call it, asking users to consent to tracking cookies that can be used for targeted advertising is far from straightforward. On 2 February 2022, the Belgian Data Protection Authority issued a momentous ruling that could make them a thing of the past. Tech journalist Jennifer Baker speaks to renowned privacy guru Pat Walshe about the ruling and the wider implications.

The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act aims to regulate emerging applications of AI in accordance with “EU values”. But for the most concerning of all such potential applications, the line between regulation and prohibition can be a tricky one to draw.

Every single day, women are abused, threatened or slandered on digital social networks. Yet the operators of these platforms are doing very little to make the digital space a safer place for women. The whistleblower Frances Haugen talked to Spiegel journalist Ann-Katrin Müller and Alexandra Geese, Member of the European Parliament, about what needs to be done right now to stop violence on the net.

Big communication platforms like Facebook, YouTube and others do little to create safe spaces for users. On the contrary, the platforms make money with hateful and divisive content, which they use to capture their user’s attention and will keep them on the platforms for as long as possible. There is no doubt about this since the latest revelations of whistleblower Frances Haugen. Women and girls - like all people affected by digital hate - are defenceless on the platforms.

In August 2021, as US military forces exited Afghanistan, the Taliban seized facial recognition systems, highlighting just how a failure to protect people’s privacy can tangibly threaten their physical safety and human rights. Far from being good tools which fell into the wrong hands, the very existence of these systems is part of broader structures of data extraction and exploitation spanning continents and centuries, with a history wrapped up in imperialism, colonialism and control.

The Taliban takeover in Kabul, the frantic evacuation efforts of foreign nationals and vulnerable Afghans, and the fear among those left behind of being targeted by the new regime are shining a spotlight on the double-edged nature of government data collection as well as digital communication tools in times of crisis.

The hacking of dissidents worldwide is even more widespread than we thought. This year’s largest cross-border investigative undertaking, the Pegasus Project, has revealed that at least 10 governments have used sophisticated Israeli spyware to gather information on human rights activists, independent journalists, and opposition politicians. The only EU member in the pool of offenders was Hungary. This might not be an unexpected development for most readers, but it is a further blow to both independent journalism and the sanctity of citizens’ privacy.