For years, there has been ample evidence that authoritarian governments around the world are relying on technology produced by American, Canadian, and European companies to facilitate human rights abuses, and the current indication is that the trend is growing.  It’s time for technology companies that sell surveillance and filtering equipment to step up and ensure they aren’t helping governments in committing human rights violations.  In our new whitepaper on the subject, “Human Rights and Technology Sales,” EFF outlines how corporations can avoid assisting repressive regimes.

The whitepaper calls on companies to increase transparency around their transactions with potentially repressive regimes and to implement “Know Your Customer” standards for auditing technology sales, including review of the purchasing government’s technical questions and customization requests. If the review indicates that the technologies or transaction may be used to facilitate human rights violations, the company should refrain from participating.   

View or download the whitepaper in its entirety here: https://www.eff.org/document/human-rights-and-technology-sales