The Dangers
The use of advanced surveillance technology by the authorities can help maintain public safety, but it also poses significant dangers when it comes to society, human rights, and democratic governance. The ability to quickly and automatically collect, process, and analyze data, especially when applied broadly to the entire population rather than just to criminal suspects, enables the government to violate fundamental rights, damage public trust, and undermine the foundations of democracy.
Violations of Privacy
The use of photography and identification technologies allows police to accumulate vast amounts of information about citizens, most of whom are not suspected of any crime, for extended periods and without a warrant. This information, including photos, video recordings, and precise location data, exposes intimate details about people's lives and movements. The use of spyware is even more problematic: it enables personal devices to be invaded and provides access to almost all of an individual's personal information, including not only communications but also personal files, photos, browsing history, location, medical and financial information, and more.
Even if we “have nothing to hide," we do not necessarily want others to know everything about our lives. The right to privacy means that we have the right to control what we want to reveal and to whom.
Infringement on Freedoms and Restriction of Democratic Space
Surveillance technologies can enable the government to infringe upon citizens' freedoms by collecting information about their political preferences, group affiliations, and opinions. This information can be used to "mark" activists and create "blacklists" to suppress criticism, silence opponents, and even manipulate election results.
Even if the government does not use the information destructively, mass data collection by the government creates a chilling effect on the freedom of expression and freedom of association, and restricts the democratic space. The feeling that we have no privacy and that we are under constant surveillance, creates a restrictive and chilling effect that limits our space for activism and violates our freedom in the most basic sense. When we are aware that someone can know everything about us, we might think twice about going to a protest, joining a social media group, or expressing our opinions. In the long term, this could lead to the erosion of public trust in the political system and damage to the government’s legitimacy.
Dependence on Technologies of Questionable Reliability
Artificial intelligence systems, which form a central part of surveillance technologies, are vulnerable to errors and biases, and their accuracy is limited. Global experience shows, for example, that facial recognition technologies, however sophisticated, can lead to misidentification and false arrests, especially of people from minority groups. Many advanced technological systems operate as a "black box," in which the system operator has no access to the raw materials and information on which outputs are based or to the AI’s operating algorithms, and therefore has no way to examine the system’s processes or accuracy. Consequently, relying on automated systems and AI technologies for significant decisions, such as whether to detain and search individuals, can lead to arbitrary decisions and infringements upon fundamental human rights.
Difficulty in Supervision and Control
New technologies are often introduced secretly, without public discussion or legislative regulation, and are operated by organizations that already have considerable power and that tend to operate with minimal to no transparency. These factors make it difficult for the public or independent groups to effectively supervise and control how these technologies are used. At best, lack of transparency and supervision allows for the outsized use of technologies and disrupts the balance between public security and human rights; at worst, a lack of effective supervision and control mechanisms could lead to the misuse of surveillance tools against government opponents, journalists, and human rights activists.