Poor accountability, feeble control mechanisms, and insufficient legal frameworks have led to systematic human rights violations in the Americas, with no consistent remedy or reparation to victims. What's needed is to materialize essential guarantees and measures to combat repeated surveillance abuses in the region. To help build a path for solutions, EFF launches the guide Tackling Arbitrary Digital Surveillance in the Americas, adding to our extensive work leveraging human rights norms to confront state privacy violations.

The document compiles privacy, data protection, and access to information guarantees established within the Inter-American Human Rights System to provide concrete, actionable guidance to governments in the Americas to curb the vicious cycle of state digital surveillance abuses. It outlines the safeguards and institutional measures necessary to protect individuals and details rules, parameters, and standards to overcome current pernicious practices and trends. 

As concerns over national and public security intensify, countries in the region seem to increasingly normalize the pervasiveness of digital surveillance technologies and their arbitrary use by security forces as a distorted form of protection. However, no actual protection can arise from arbitrary surveillance. 

When public security, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies neglect or harm settled rights in the name of national security or public order, they too become a threat. Tolerating rights violations creates the dire situation that the Freedom of Expression Special Rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights thoroughly analyzed in his report about the serious impacts of digital surveillance on freedom of expression in the Americas.

The great majority of states in Latin America have ratified the American Convention on Human Rights. As such, the parameters and rules our new guide describes stem directly from their obligations before international human rights law. State agents and institutions must take the necessary measures to make them a reality.

As EFF’s guide points out, states must implement clear and precise legal frameworks that:

• define surveillance powers and limitations;
• ensure all surveillance measures pursue legitimate aims without discriminatory ends;
• subject interference with privacy to rigorous necessity and proportionality analysis;
• require prior judicial authorization for digital surveillance measures;
• maintain detailed records of surveillance operations;
• establish independent civilian oversight institutions with technical expertise and enforcement powers;
• guarantee individuals' right to informational self-determination and proper notification; and
• provide effective remedies and reparation for victims of surveillance abuses.

States must also put in place the institutional processes and structures to give effect to these legal guarantees. As we stress in the document, States that embrace the guide’s recommendations will not only comply with their international obligations, but will also build more resilient, rights-respecting security architectures capable of addressing genuine threats without sacrificing the freedoms they exist to protect. 

Civil society leaders, activists, legal experts, public defenders, oversight institutions, and state officials committed to human rights must gather and ramp up the fight against the normalization of digital surveillance abuses in the Americas. We hope that EFF’s new guide can serve as a crucial tool in strengthening this fight, one that we have joined since our early days.

Governments around the world are adopting new laws and policies aimed at addressing online harms, including laws intended to curb cybercrime and disinformation, and ostensibly protect user safety. While these efforts are often framed as necessary responses to legitimate concerns, they are increasingly being used in ways that restrict fundamental rights.

In a recent submission to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, we highlighted how these evolving regulatory approaches are affecting human rights defenders (HRDs) and the broader digital environment in which they operate.

Threats to Human Rights Defenders

Across multiple regions, cybercrime and national security laws are being applied to prosecute lawful expression, restrict access to information, and expand state surveillance. In some cases, these measures are implemented without adequate judicial oversight or clear safeguards, raising concerns about their compatibility with international human rights standards.

Regulatory developments in one jurisdiction are also influencing approaches elsewhere. The UK’s Online Safety Act, for example, has contributed to the global diffusion of “duty of care” frameworks. In other contexts, similar models have been adopted with fewer protections, including provisions that criminalize broadly defined categories of speech or require user identification, increasing risks for those engaged in the defense of human rights.

At the same time, disruptions to internet access—including shutdowns, throttling, and geo-blocking—continue to affect the ability of HRDs to communicate, document abuses, and access support networks. These measures can have significant implications not only for freedom of expression, but also for personal safety, particularly in situations of conflict or political unrest.

The expanded use of digital surveillance technologies further compounds these risks. Spyware and biometric monitoring systems have been deployed against activists and journalists, in some cases across national borders. These practices result in intimidation, detention, and other forms of retaliation.

The practices of social media platforms can also put human rights defenders—and their speech—at risk. Content moderation systems that rely on broadly defined policies, automated enforcement, and limited transparency can result in the removal or suppression of speech, including documentation of human rights violations. Inconsistent enforcement across languages and regions, as well as insufficient avenues for redress, disproportionately affects HRDs and marginalized communities.

Putting Human Rights First

These trends underscore the importance of ensuring that regulatory and corporate responses to online harms are grounded in human rights principles. This includes adopting clear and narrowly tailored legal frameworks, ensuring independent oversight, and providing effective safeguards for privacy, expression, and association.

It also requires meaningful engagement with civil society. Human rights defenders bring essential expertise on the local and contextual impacts of digital policies, and their participation is critical to developing effective and rights-respecting approaches.

As digital technologies continue to shape civic space, protecting the individuals and communities who rely on them to advance human rights remains an urgent priority.

You can read our full submission here.