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+title: Joint civil society statement: States use of digital surveillance technologies to fight pandemic must respect human rights
+date: 2020-04-03 00:01:03 
+updated: 2020-04-03 00:01:03 
+author: 46halbe
+tags: update, pressemitteilung
+
+The COVID-19 pandemic is a global public health emergency that requires a coordinated and large-scale response by governments worldwide. However, States’ efforts to contain the virus must not be used as a cover to usher in a new era of greatly expanded systems of invasive digital surveillance.
+
+<!-- TEASER_END -->
+
+We, the undersigned organizations, urge governments to show leadership
+in tackling the pandemic in a way that ensures that the use of digital
+technologies to track and monitor individuals and populations is carried
+out strictly in line with human rights.
+
+Technology can and should play an important role during this effort to
+save lives, such as to spread public health messages and increase access
+to health care. However, an increase in non-consensual state digital
+surveillance powers, such as obtaining access to mobile phone location
+data, threatens privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of
+association, in ways that could violate rights and degrade trust in
+public authorities – undermining the effectiveness of any public health
+response. Such measures also pose a risk of discrimination and may
+disproportionately harm already marginalized communities.
+
+These are extraordinary times, but human rights law still applies.
+Indeed, the human rights framework is designed to ensure that different
+rights can be carefully balanced to protect individuals and wider
+societies. States cannot simply disregard rights such as privacy and
+freedom of expression in the name of tackling a public health crisis. On
+the contrary, protecting human rights also promotes public health. Now
+more than ever, governments must rigorously ensure that any restrictions
+to these rights is in line with long-established human rights
+safeguards.
+
+This crisis offers an opportunity to demonstrate our shared humanity. We
+can make extraordinary efforts to fight this pandemic that are
+consistent with human rights standards and the rule of law. The
+decisions that governments make now to confront the pandemic will shape
+what the world looks like in the future.
+
+We call on all governments not to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic with
+increased digital surveillance unless the following conditions are met:
+
+1.  Surveillance measures adopted to address the pandemic must be
+    lawful, necessary and proportionate. They must be provided for by
+    law and must be justified by legitimate public health objectives, as
+    determined by the appropriate public health authorities, and be
+    proportionate to those needs. Governments must be transparent about
+    the measures they are taking so that they can be scrutinized and if
+    appropriate later modified, retracted, or overturned. We cannot
+    allow the COVID-19 pandemic to serve as an excuse for indiscriminate
+    mass surveillance.
+2.  If governments expand monitoring and surveillance powers then such
+    powers must be time-bound, and only continue for as long as
+    necessary to address the current pandemic. We cannot allow the
+    COVID-19 pandemic to serve as an excuse for indefinite surveillance.
+3.  States must ensure that increased collection, retention, and
+    aggregation of personal data, including health data, is only used
+    for the purposes of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data
+    collected, retained, and aggregated to respond to the pandemic must
+    be limited in scope, time-bound in relation to the pandemic and must
+    not be used for commercial or any other purposes. We cannot allow
+    the COVID-19 pandemic to serve as an excuse to gut individual’s
+    right to privacy.
+4.  Governments must take every effort to protect people’s data,
+    including ensuring sufficient security of any personal data
+    collected and of any devices, applications, networks, or services
+    involved in collection, transmission, processing, and storage. Any
+    claims that data is anonymous must be based on evidence and
+    supported with sufficient information regarding how it has been
+    anonymized. We cannot allow attempts to respond to this pandemic to
+    be used as justification for compromising people’s digital safety.
+5.  Any use of digital surveillance technologies in responding to
+    COVID-19, including big data and artificial intelligence systems,
+    must address the risk that these tools will facilitate
+    discrimination and other rights abuses against racial minorities,
+    people living in poverty, and other marginalized populations, whose
+    needs and lived realities may be obscured or misrepresented in large
+    datasets. We cannot allow the COVID-19 pandemic to further increase
+    the gap in the enjoyment of human rights between different groups in
+    society.
+6.  If governments enter into data sharing agreements with other public
+    or private sector entities, they must be based on law, and the
+    existence of these agreements and information necessary to assess
+    their impact on privacy and human rights must be publicly disclosed
+    – in writing, with sunset clauses, public oversight and other
+    safeguards by default. Businesses involved in efforts by governments
+    to tackle COVID-19 must undertake due diligence to ensure they
+    respect human rights, and ensure any intervention is firewalled from
+    other business and commercial interests. We cannot allow the
+    COVID-19 pandemic to serve as an excuse for keeping people in the
+    dark about what information their governments are gathering and
+    sharing with third parties.
+7.  Any response must incorporate accountability protections and
+    safeguards against abuse. Increased surveillance efforts related to
+    COVID-19 should not fall under the domain of security or
+    intelligence agencies and must be subject to effective oversight by
+    appropriate independent bodies. Further, individuals must be given
+    the opportunity to know about and challenge any COVID-19 related
+    measures to collect, aggregate, and retain, and use data.
+    Individuals who have been subjected to surveillance must have access
+    to effective remedies.
+8.  COVID-19 related responses that include data collection efforts
+    should include means for free, active, and meaningful participation
+    of relevant stakeholders, in particular experts in the public health
+    sector and the most marginalized population groups.
+
+[All
+Signatories](https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/02/joint-civil-society-statement-states-use-digital-surveillance-technologies-fight)
+of this joint statement.