Privacy is as a basic, fundamental human right. It is also an endangered right. New digital technologies track and scrutinize us all at this age of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2018). The digital economy considers every click, search or like as an asset to be monetized. Our lives, reflected in cyberspace, are plundered for behavioral data for the sake of a system that converts our freedom into profit. We are quietly being domesticated into accepting as normal that decision rights vanish before we even know that there is a decision to make.
A new awareness infused by a human-rights based approach that consider each individual “netizen” as a dignified moral being, worth of respect, is required. Otherwise, our connectivity will continue to offer a perverse amalgam of empowerment inextricably layered with diminishment.
For these reasons, the Foundation OISTE, – building upon the various resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council touching on the protection and promotion of the right to privacy in the digital age – has set up a panel to address, inter alia, the following issues:
- Identifying and clarifying principles, standards and best practices regarding the promotion and protection of the human right to privacy
- Reinforcing the principles of non-arbitrariness, lawfulness, legality, necessity and proportionality in communications surveillance by the State.
- Ensuring that profiling, automated decision-making and machine-learning technologies do proceed in accordance to agreed safeguards and do not affect the enjoyment of human rights
- Introducing a gender perspective and ensuring that there exists effective domestic oversight and remedies for the violation of the human right to privacy
- Addressing the issue of personal data management: often individuals do not provide their free, explicit and informed consent to the re-use, sale or multiple re-sales of their personal data
- Addressing the issue of human rights impacts of artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on examples of discrimination and bias
The OISTE Foundation signed The International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance right after they were launched at the 24th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2013. OISTE invites other organizations to join: https://necessaryandproportionate.org/
| Date & Time | Mar 3rd 03:00 pm CET |
| Title | OISTE Foundation Webinar; The Human Right to Privacy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism |
| Special Keynote by | – Pierre Maudet Conseiller d’Etat, State of Geneva, Switzerland |
| Moderated by: | – Carlos Creus Moreira: Secretary General of OISTE |
| Speakers | – Navi Pillay Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR – Hans-Christian Boos CEO, Arago – Sébastien Fanti Swiss lawyer, Notary, and Data Protection Commissioner of the Swiss Canton of Valais – Estelle Massé Senior Policy Analyst and Global Data Protection Lead – Access Now – Alana Tart Senior digital, technology and privacy lawyer – PMI – Steve Crown Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Human Rights – Microsoft |
