Seeking transparency and accountability in Paraguay’s use of facial recognition, EFF, the Association of Technology, Education, Development, Research, Communication (TEDIC), and the Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the state for arbitrarily denying access to information about its implementation and use of the technology as a tool for mass surveillance that erodes people’s privacy rights. 

The case involves the Ministry of the Interior and National Police’s installation in 2019 of surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology in Asunción. Maricarmen Sequera, a lawyer and executive director of TEDIC, filed an information request with the ministry seeking details and protocols about the implementation and use of facial recognition systems and the personal data processing involved. 

The request sought information about, among other things, whether the state had conducted human rights or data protection impact assessments, as well as if it had developed measures and protocols for avoiding abuses, illicit uses of personal data, and other risks in the deployment of the facial recognition system.

The state denied most of the information requested, arguing that implementation details, protocols, and the processing of individuals' personal data were confidential security information. TEDIC contested the secrecy in courts, but the analyses lagged and ultimately sustained the denial of information. 

The petition filed last Friday (19) cites Inter-American standards upholding the public’s right to access information, particularly in relation to national security, that the Paraguayan authorities disregarded in denying TEDIC’s information request. The petition also argues that the refusal of information violated privacy and the right to informational self-determination.

The petition asks the Commission to recognize a violation of those rights and require the state to deliver the information requested. Further, the petition seeks an order compelling the state to adopt mandatory permanent mechanisms of active transparency regarding the acquisition, contracting, implementation, financing, functioning, and use of surveillance technologies by public bodies, especially those that incorporate processing of biometric data or artificial intelligence systems. 

It also asks the Commission to order the state to mandatory procedures for human rights impact assessments prior to acquiring and using surveillance technologies, particularly those that collect biometric data or use artificial intelligence.

The state’s lack of transparency in this case is not an isolated incident, both in Paraguay and in Latin America, where opacity in matters of security and surveillance is the unsettling rule. The situation gets worse with the increasing normalization of intrusive surveillance technologies by states in the region.

The Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission emphasized that states should disclose surveillance capabilities and contracts, and acknowledge state use of surveillance technologies at a meaningful level of detail, to facilitate essential public debate on the necessary limitations of surveillance in democratic societies and ensure compliance with international human rights law.

We hope that the Inter-American Commission upholds the robust safeguards in the Inter-American System and advances access to information and privacy rights in a case that can set a crucial precedent for the region.

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.