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Landmark Artificial Intelligence Act in EU Slammed as Rights 'Failure'
One expert said the law "is littered with concessions to industry lobbying, exemptions for the most dangerous uses of AI by law enforcement and migration authorities, and prohibitions... full of loopholes."
Mar 13, 2024
As European Union policymakers on Wednesday lauded the approval of the Artificial Intelligence Act, critics warn the legislation represents a giveaway to corporate interests and falls short in key areas.
Daniel Leufer, a senior policy analyst at the Brussels office of advocacy group Access Now, called the bloc's landmark AI legislation "a failure from a human rights perspective and a victory for industry and police."
Following negotiations to finalize the AI Act in December, the world's first sweeping regulations for the rapidly evolving technology were adopted by members of the European Parliament 523-46 with 49 abstentions. After some final formalities, the law is expected to take effect in May or June, with various provisions entering into force over the next few years.
"Even though adopting the world's first rules on the development and deployment of AI technologies is a milestone, it is disappointing that the E.U. and its 27 member states chose to prioritize the interest of industry and law enforcement agencies over protecting people and their human rights," said Mher Hakobyan, Amnesty International's advocacy adviser on artificial intelligence.
The law applies a "risk-based approach" to AI products and services. As The Associated Pressreported Wednesday:
The vast majority of AI systems are expected to be low risk, such as content recommendation systems or spam filters. Companies can choose to follow voluntary requirements and codes of conduct.
High-risk uses of AI, such as in medical devices or critical infrastructure like water or electrical networks, face tougher requirements like using high-quality data and providing clear information to users.
Some AI uses are banned because they're deemed to pose an unacceptable risk, like social scoring systems that govern how people behave, some types of predictive policing, and emotion recognition systems in school and workplaces.
Other banned uses include police scanning faces in public using AI-powered remote "biometric identification" systems, except for serious crimes like kidnapping or terrorism.
While some praised positive commonsense guidelines and protections, Leufer said that "the new AI Act is littered with concessions to industry lobbying, exemptions for the most dangerous uses of AI by law enforcement and migration authorities, and prohibitions so full of loopholes that they don't actually ban some of the most dangerous uses of AI."
Along with also expressing concerns about how the law will impact migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, Hakobyan highlighted that "it does not ban the reckless use and export of draconian AI technologies."
Access Now and Amnesty are part of the #ProtectNotSurveil coalition, which released a joint statement warning that the AI Act "sets a dangerous precedent," particularly with its exemptions for law enforcement, migration officials, and national security.
Other members of the coalition include EuroMed Rights, European Digital Rights, and Statewatch, whose executive director, Chris Jones, said in a statement that "the AI Act might be a new law but it fits into a much older story in which E.U. governments and agencies—including Frontex—have violated the rights of migrants and refugees for decades."
Frontex—officially the European Border and Coast Guard Agency—has long faced criticism from human rights groups for failing to protect people entering the bloc, particularly those traveling by sea.
"Implemented along with a swathe of new restrictive asylum and migration laws, the AI Act will lead to the use of digital technologies in new and harmful ways to shore up 'Fortress Europe' and to limit the arrival of vulnerable people seeking safety," Jones warned. "Civil society coalitions across and beyond Europe should work together to mitigate the worst effects of these laws, and continue to towards building societies that prioritize care over surveillance and criminalization."
"It has severe shortcomings from the point of view of fundamental rights and should not be treated as a golden standard for rights-based AI regulation."
Campaigners hope policymakers worldwide now take lessons from this legislative process.
In a Wednesday op-ed, Laura Lazaro Cabrera, counsel and director of Center for Democracy & Technology Europe's Equity and Data Program, argued the law "will become the benchmark for AI regulation globally in what has become a race against the clock as lawmakers grapple with a fast-moving development of a technology with far-reaching impacts on our basic human rights."
After the vote, Lazaro Cabrera stressed that "there's so much at stake in the implementation of the AI Act and so, as the dust settles, we all face the difficult task of unpacking a complex, lengthy, and unprecedented law. Close coordination with experts and civil society will be crucial to ensure that the act's interpretation and application mean that it is effective and consistent with the act's own articulated goals: protecting human rights, democracy, and the rule of law."
European Center for Not-for-Profit Law's Karolina Iwańska responded similarly: "Let's be clear: It has severe shortcomings from the point of view of fundamental rights and should not be treated as a golden standard for rights-based AI regulation. Having said that, we will work on the strongest possible implementation."
Yannis Vardakastanis, president of the European Disability Forum, said in a statement that "the AI Act addresses human rights, but not as comprehensively as we hoped for—we now call on the European Union to close this gap with future initiatives."
Amnesty's Hakobyan emphasized that "countries outside of the E.U. should learn from the bloc's failure to adequately regulate AI technologies and must not succumb to pressures by the technology industry and law enforcement authorities whilst developing regulation. States should instead put in place robust and binding AI legislation which prioritizes people and their rights."
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Gaza Internet Blackout Conceals Israel's Human Rights Violations—And Is Itself One
"It is unconscionable to toy with connectivity amidst unprecedented violence and unfathomable human suffering," said one campaigner, demanding global action "to end the war and internet shutdowns."
Jan 18, 2024
Human rights advocates sounded the alarm as Thursday marked the seventh straight day of a near-total telecommunications blackout in the Gaza Strip—the ninth and longest outage since Israel declared war in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7.
"For over 100 days, Gaza has endured on-and-off disruptions and internet shutdowns, with its people now facing the longest blackout since October," said Kassem Mnejja, a campaigner with the digital rights group Access Now.
"With the people of Gaza continually in the dark, documenting and sharing information about what is happening on the ground is increasingly challenging, if not outright impossible," added Mnejja, whose group is calling for a physical and digital cease-fire.
Paltel, a Palestinian internet service provider (ISP), said on social media last week: "We regret to announce that all telecom services in Gaza Strip have been lost due to the ongoing aggression. Gaza is blacked out again."
"Long hours of service interruption," the ISP
added Thursday. "How many loved ones have we lost? How much do we worry about our loved ones?"
Despite Israel's claims that its troops are targeting militants in the Hamas-governed enclave, Israeli forces have killed at least 24,620 Palestinians—mostly women and children—and wounded another 61,830, according to officials in Gaza. Thousands more remain missing in the rubble that used to be homes, hospitals, mosques, schools, and other civilian infrastructure.
Sharing a new graph from the watchdog NetBlocks that shows network connectivity in Gaza throughout the war, Mohammed Khader, policy manager at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, noted that the start of the current blackout coincided with International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings for the South African-led case accusing Israel of genocide.
This blackout began the same day as South Africa\xe2\x80\x99s ICJ case on Israel\xe2\x80\x99s genocide in Gaza.\n\nLike the blackout that followed the 2019 Khartoum Massacre in Sudan, this is an intentional effort by Israel to isolate Palestinians from the world and hide the full scale of destruction.— (@)
The section of South Africa's 84-page application to the ICJ summarizing genocidal acts states that "Israel is deliberately imposing telecommunications blackouts on Gaza and restricting access by fact-finding bodies and the international media. At the same time, Palestinian journalists are being killed at a rate significantly higher than has occurred in any conflict in the past 100 years."
A Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate volunteer
said last week that the group has evidence that at least 96 of the 109 Gaza reporters whose deaths it documented "were deliberately and specifically targeted by surgical Israeli strikes against them."
After an Israeli airstrike killed Wael Abu Fannouna on Thursday, Gaza officials announced that at least 119 members of the media have been killed since October 7. The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has identified 76 of them.
"A communications blackout is a news blackout," CPJ stressed in a late October statement about Gaza—as Anealla Safdar, Al Jazeera's Europe editor, recalled in response to the NetBlocks update on Thursday.
"This can lead to serious consequences with an independent, factual information vacuum that can be filled with deadly propaganda, dis- and misinformation," CPJ warned at the time, also highlighting that targeting journalists or media infrastructure constitutes possible war crimes.
"At this dark hour, we stand with journalists," the group added, "with those truth-seekers whose daily work keeps us informed with facts that shed light on the human condition and help to hold power to account."
In addition to limiting on-the-ground reporting on the war, the current blackout "left civilians unable to call for help and aid workers struggling to reach them as Israeli airstrikes rained down on the south," The New York Timesreported Wednesday.
According to the newspaper:
Airstrikes and fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants in Khan Younis have been so intense that repair crews have had trouble reaching the damaged sites, Paltel said. Last week, two of its workers, in the process of making repairs, were killed when a company car was fired upon, Paltel said, adding that it had coordinated the repairs with the Israeli authorities in advance. The Israeli military said the episode had been referred for investigation.
"Internet shutdowns are a matter of life and death in Gaza," declared Marwa Fatafta, Access Now's MENA policy and advocacy director.
"It is unconscionable to toy with connectivity amidst unprecedented violence and unfathomable human suffering," Fatafta said. "The international community must act now to end the war and internet shutdowns. The silence so far has been glaring."
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Journalists, Rights Groups Urge Ban on 'Sinister' Spyware Like Pegasus
"The use of spyware and unlawful targeted surveillance violates the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and access to information, peaceful assembly and association, freedom of movement, and privacy."
May 03, 2023
Six dozen civil society groups, journalists, and experts marked World Press Freedom Day on Wednesday with a joint call for "all governments to implement an immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer, servicing, and use of digital surveillance technologies, as well as a ban on abusive commercial spyware technology and its vendors."
The use of spyware against media workers is "an alarming trend impacting freedom of the press and creating a wider chilling effect on civil society and civic space," the statement argues. "Privacy, source protection, and digital security are essential components of press freedom, allowing journalists to protect the confidentiality and integrity of their work and sources."
"As governments and other entities seek to suppress the press and silence dissent, we are seeing an exponential increase in the market for digital surveillance technologies, including spyware, that overrides these journalistic principles."
"As governments and other entities seek to suppress the press and silence dissent, we are seeing an exponential increase in the market for digital surveillance technologies, including spyware, that overrides these journalistic principles," the statement continues. Such tools "can infiltrate a target's phone, giving the attacker full access to emails, messages, contacts, and even the device's microphone and camera," rendering secure and encrypted platforms useless.
"From El Salvador to Mexico, from India to Azerbaijan, from Hungary to Morocco, to Ethiopia—the list goes on of countries where investigative journalists working to expose corruption, power abuses, or human rights violations, have been targeted by invasive spyware such as Pegasus," the statement adds, referencing spyware from the Israeli firm NSO Group that has been used to target reporters, dissidents, and world leaders.
The advocates of banning this type of surveilleance technology noted that there are at least 180 known cases of potentially targeted journalists across 21 countries. They pointed to multiple examples, including Hungary-based Andras Szabo and Szabolcs Panyi being targeted with Pegasus in 2019, and Raymond Mujuni and Canary Mugume facing the same spyware two years later in Uganda.
According to the statement:
Moroccan investigative journalist Omar al-Radi was targeted with Pegasus spyware between 2019 and 2021, and later sentenced to six years in prison on bogus rape and espionage charges. Meanwhile journalist Hicham Mansouri, who fled from Morocco to France in 2016 following state harassment and detention, was hacked by Pegasus at least 20 times between February and April 2021.
Perhaps the most infamous example of how spyware can facilitate and enable transnational repression and serious human rights violations, including enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killing, is the murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Consulate of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. Both prior to and after his death, Mr. Kashoggi's family members and acquaintances were targeted by Pegasus spyware.
"It is clear that the use of spyware and unlawful targeted surveillance violates the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and access to information, peaceful assembly and association, freedom of movement, and privacy," the statement asserts, demanding not only a ban but also accountability for developers and distributors of the technology, and boosted efforts to protect journalists.
The statement was launched at Secret Surveillance: Countering Spyware's Threats to Freedom of the Press and Expression, an event co-hosted by advocacy organizations including Access Now.
"Invasive and abusive commercial spyware that has been used to facilitate human rights abuses globally has no place in our world," declared Access Now surveillance campaigner Rand Hammoud. "Years worth of evidence by civil society has demonstrated that the companies selling these technologies should not be rewarded with governmental contracts that would continue enabling their abuses."
\u201c#WorldPressFreedomDay\n\nJournalists can\u2019t work, media can\u2019t report accurately + freedom of expression can\u2019t flourish under constant threat of invasive surveillance.\n\n\u274c It\u2019s time for a ban on commercial spyware that has facilitated human rights abuses. \u274c \nhttps://t.co/BazjC73Cas\u201d— Access Now (@Access Now) 1683100853
Natalia Krapiva, tech legal counsel at Access Now, agreed that "this sinister technology that has been misused and abused by governments around the world is not safe in any hands, and its use can never be justified."
"Discussions do not suffice," Krapiva added. "We expect action: Protect freedom of the press, stamp out the spyware threat."
The spyware statement came as other members of the media acknowledged World Press Freedom Day in various ways, including sounding the alarm about the impacts of artificial intelligence on fact-based journalism, demanding global safeguards for digital privacy, and calling out the U.S. government for continuing to seek the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
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