The Problem
Private companies across the world are developing, selling and exporting surveillance systems that are used to violate human rights and facilitate internal repression, all with little accountability.
The Map
According to news reports and evidence gathered, our map shows where the technologies come from, who builds them, and who buys them.
What & Who
What can change
Governments need to begin regulating this trade by updating export laws, to encourage moral responsibility amongst private companies and to prevent their technologies from empowering dictatorships and oppressive regimes with powerful surveillance systems.
Who we are
Global problems require global solutions. The CAUSE brings together internationally focused NGOs and others, to coordinate an international call for action from national governments and regional institutions, as well as raising wider awareness of the privatised surveillance industry and the damaging impact the technologies have on human rights.
CAUSE Letter and Signatories
CAUSE Open Letter
We, the undersigned organisations, express our grave concern at the development and the irresponsible sale and export of surveillance technologies across the world, where they are being used by oppressive and authoritarian regimes for internal repression of their citizens and in violation of a range of fundamental human rights.
No country seems off limits to companies that create and sell these damaging surveillance tools: various reports document their use in countries as diverse as Bahrain, Turkmenistan, Egypt, Morocco and Ethiopia amongst others. The current lack of concerted and effective international trade regulation has fostered an environment in which commercial companies have enabled authoritarian regimes with pervasive surveillance capabilities.
The proliferation of these technologies allows for mass surveillance of entire countries, via hacking computers or phones, mapping, profiling and analysing social networks, installing malware allowing for surreptitious extraction of data, and mass internet monitoring and filtering through the tapping of under-sea fibre-optics cables that carry all communications traffic in and out of countries. These technologies enable regimes to crush dissent or criticism, chill free speech and destroy the fundamental rights that underpin democratic societies.
We work in diverse and challenging environments across the world defending international human rights. We have seen the impact and effect these tools have on citizens and civil society groups alike. Inaction will further embolden the surveillance trade and normalise state surveillance.
We urge governments to come together and take action.
Read the full letter
Members of CAUSE
Resources
Recent Updates
France: Opening of a judicial investigation targeting Qosmos for complicity in acts of torture in Syria
14th April
Read news from France as FIDH welcome the decision to open a judicial investigation regarding Qosmos and alleged complicity in acts of torture in Syria :
CAUSE launches
4th April
Update: April 14, 2014: After only 10 days, more organisations have signed the CAUSE open letter calling for action on surveillance technologies including: ECCHR, Big Brother Watch, Global Witness,