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Responsible Business Conduct in Cyberspace

05 May, 2015

Governments have a duty to protect against human rights violations in relation to surveillance and reconnaissance technology; Businesses engaged in surveillance have to fulfil their responsibility to respect human rights.

IHRB Commentary by Roel Nieuwenkamp, Chair of the OECD Working Party on Responsible Business Conduct and Professor at the University of Amsterdam.

At the Global Conference on CyberSpace held in the Hague in April, I spoke about human rights in the context of development and sales of surveillance technology and software – a fascinating topic that deserves increased attention.

Surveillance and reconnaissance technologies invoke images of Hollywood spy movies. This is a world of deep packet inspection (DPI), spyware, keyloggers, Trojan horses and password sniffing- tools invented to observe, capture and explore the behaviour and identities of people and organisations on computer networks.

Sellers of such technologies often justify their use by saying they are intended to support law enforcement or protect the public welfare (e.g. through protecting against terrorist activity), but they often can also be used to facilitate human rights violations by the purchasers.

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