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Rethinking Risk and Security of Human Rights Defenders in the Digital Age
Abstract
Human rights defenders (HRDs) are increasingly empowered by, and dependent upon, digital technologies. These technologies have opened up new potentials, enabling HRDs to extend their capacity to document and analyse human rights abuses, to amplify them, and to more effectively organize locally and internationally. Digital technologies, however, have simultaneously created new points of weakness: exposing HRDs' whereabouts, activities and networks, and creating evidence against them through data leakages, digital traces, and direct surveillance and interception. Attacks on HRDs have escalated over the past two years, with a significant increase in the number of entrapments and networks being compromised through the use of computers, cameras, mobile phones and the internet. This rapidly changing landscape poses a number of challenges to practitioners working in the field of security and protection for HRDs and has led to a growing concern about how best to enable HRDs to assess and mitigate the related risks. After contextualizing and introducing the dimensions of digital insecurity for HRDs, this paper will note some of the responses to HRDs' digital security needs which have been developed, and their limitations. It will then go on to identify three key principles that should inform the work of practitioners in future and to raise a series of critical questions for further research and work in this area.
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“This surveillance can take many forms and allows governments to harvest intelligence that can be used to target coercion (13, 30, 53–56).”
From Physical and virtual repertoires of contention (2022) · cites this paper as [55]
Citations
Cited by
Earl, J. (2022) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.abl8198 · Cited by 250
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New Threats and Countermeasures in Digital Crime and Cyber Terrorism
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Kazansky, B. (2021) · Big Data & Society · doi:10.1177/2053951720985557 · Cited by 39
“…become known as the ‘Arab Spring’, issues around ‘information controls’ and digital surveillance became a growing locus of concern (Citizen Lab, 2014; Hankey and O’Clunaigh, 2013), which reached a peak in public interest directly following the Snowden leaks in 2013 (Dencik and Cable, 2017; Milan…”
BackgroundDrawing a line: Digital transnational repression against political exiles and host state sovereignty
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“This development has enabled a more sophisticated and elaborate way of gathering and analysing data and is likely to continue to greatly aid future fieldwork (Fileborn, 2016; Hankey and Clunaigh, 2013).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialA Brief Review of New Threats and Countermeasures in Digital Crime and Cyber Terrorism
Dawson, M. E. (2015) · Advances in digital crime, forensics, and cyber terrorism book series · doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-8345-7.ch001 · Cited by 16
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FCJ-195 Privacy, Responsibility, and Human Rights Activism
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“With the significant rise of the use of the Internet and of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) all around the world, our practices both in the offline and online world are inevitably interconnected [4, 11].”
Background8 The Negative Externalities of Cyberspace Insecurity and Instability for Civil Society
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Gutiérrez, M. (2018) · Palgrave studies in communication for social change · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-78319-2_3 · Cited by 2
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“They are constantly subjected to physical attacks and technological threats as they conduct their business (Hankey & ‘ O Clunaigh, 2013).”
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(2023) · Edinburgh University Press eBooks · doi:10.1515/9781399512510-014
Tableau de translittération du russe vers le français
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Metadata
- Authors
- Hankey, S., & O Clunaigh, D.
- Venue
- Journal of Human Rights Practice
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2013-11-01
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 535-547
- ISSN
- 1757-9619 (ISSN-L)
- 1757-9627
- OpenAlex
- W2162028390
- Cited by
- 36
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 2 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 5
- FWCI
- 6.20
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Human Rights Practice (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Law › Law, Rights, and Freedoms
- Social Sciences › Law › Freedom of Expression and Defamation
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics
- Keywords
- human rights defenders, digital security, surveillance, data leakage, digital traces, network compromise, entrapment, security and protection, risk assessment, digital technologies
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