Everyone has the right to privacy, expression and opinion
Globally we’re seeing widespread digital surveillance, impacting a huge number of rights, including privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of association. It can enable the mass monitoring of people and facilitate profiling, targeting and repression. What we read, who we know, where we go, even what we think. Our every move is constantly tracked by a handful of powerful companies, including Meta and Google.
The more time we spend scrolling on their platforms, the more data they collect and the more money they can make. This surveillance business model leads to the amplification of inflammatory and hateful content with devastating real-world consequences. In Aotearoa New Zealand digital surveillance systems also include such systems as number plate recognition and facial recognition. There are an estimated 10,000 publicly owned and at least 400,000 privately run security cameras.
Amnesty International regards mass digital surveillance as a major systemic threat to human rights, enabling both the mass harvesting of private data for commercial purposes and abuse by governments to suppress dissent and crush freedom of expression.

What we’re doing:
- Research: Amnesty Tech is a dedicated part of Amnesty focused on technology and human rights. This includes ensuring Big Tech is effectively regulated to protect human rights and make companies more transparent and accountable. Resist the use of technology to silence activists, preventing unlawful surveillance, censorship and internet shutdowns. And ensuring discrimination and bias are no longer programmed into algorithms that make life-changing decisions about us.
- Advocacy and Campaigning: In Aotearoa we have long been campaigning on tech and human rights. From this research to our work on facial recognition technology. We’re also campaigning to make spaces like social media safer by design. These spaces can empower communities and society. It has a huge role in democratising the way we share and find information, and have a say. But what we also know is that there are online platforms causing significant harm. There are numerous examples of how what’s happening online has contributed to real world violence and hate. But it doesn't have to be this way. We can help to transform social media into a positive force in all of our lives.