Amazon recently debuted a new feature for its Ring cameras that the company is calling Throw Away the Key Encryption (TAKE). The idea is to cut back on the amount of video content available to the company, and thus potentially available to law enforcement. But while it might technically add a speed bump to accessing full video content, it doesn’t deliver nearly the level of privacy we should be demanding from video doorbells and other security cameras.

TAKE introduces a new way for Ring to manage encryption keys, where the user’s device has its key, then the company holds encryption keys temporarily within its own cloud infrastructure. Ring’s servers receive the keys temporarily so it can offer a variety of the features it says it can’t offer when a user chooses to use end-to-end encryption, like video descriptions, smart alerts, video search, and more, then deletes the key after 24 hours. 

This differs from how it works now, where footage is encrypted in transit and at rest, then decrypted by Ring, which always has access to the footage, to process those features. 

Comparatively, this is an improvement to the default settings Ring has now, because it at least puts some restrictions on historical footage, but it has some serious holes worth exploring.

Ring Gets Access to Unencrypted Video for a Short Period

Ring has designed its service so many of its camera features, including smart alerts and video search, need cloud processing to work. That means to provide those features, Ring needs to decrypt the footage while it’s stored in Ring’s cloud servers. 

With TAKE, in order to decrypt footage to offer these features, Ring gets access to footage stored in the cloud for 24 hours. TAKE adds some small measures using secure enclaves to make base key material harder to directly export, but keys are still released to services that can be modified. With access to the keys, the cloud processing does its thing and delivers the requested feature to the user. The key is then deleted 24 hours later—until the user wants to watch an old video or use other so-called “smart” features, at which point the keys are sent back to the server. 

In practice, that makes the system as a whole barely different from encryption at rest where the server holds the keys. The client device essentially takes the place of a hardware security module (HSM), including making those keys available to the server whenever they’re needed. The end result is an improvement from the status quo, but still not even close to the privacy protections of end-to-end encryption. 

The company says it does not keep backups of the keys and there’s no way for a Ring employee to access footage. It also claims that any decrypted content is deleted from its servers. 

But that doesn’t mean much when user actions send the keys back to the server. And making features like “Video Search” and “Smart Video Descriptions” available to the device owner means that while the footage can’t be seen by Ring, descriptions are readily available to the company. In response to a question about capability, Ring responded to us that, “As Ring continues to expand and further strengthen TAKE's protections, video descriptions will be included.”

Plus, account recovery keys are stored in the camera itself by default. When that’s paired with the fact that currently, indices of video contents are available to the company, it means that TAKE isn’t even a protection against mass surveillance. Law enforcement could request a mass search across cameras for certain terms, then delve into further details by seizing cameras of interest from the device-owner, decrypting account backups, and using that information to decrypt encrypted videos. 

Law Enforcement May Still Seek to Compel Access to Footage

Because of the ways the access and key rotations work, it’s technically still possible for Ring to alter its current practice if compelled to do so by law enforcement, in much the same way as other existing encryption-at-rest systems where the company holds the keys. For example, Ring could receive an order that demands they save content encryption keys or unencrypted videos from memory to disk, which would mean they’d retain some level of access. 

In an email to EFF, Ring stated, “By design, under TAKE, Ring will not be able to provide encryption keys or decrypted content. With TAKE, Ring will only preserve and provide encrypted video files in response to valid legal process. It has been and continues to be Ring's policy to object to overbroad legal requests.” EFF specifically asked about the possibility of complying with law enforcement orders to modify existing practice to turn over or preserve unencrypted video, which appears to be technically possible, but the company did not address it.

End-to-end encryption works to maintain trust by its user base because the company that employs it never has access to the keys at any point, making it impossible for itself to access the encrypted contents. This also means law enforcement can’t demand the service retain keys or choose not to rotate them. As described, this level of protection isn’t offered with TAKE.

Ultimately, Ring is the one managing this software and its implementation, and beyond a white paper, “trust us” is the only level of verification they’re offering outside observers. While it doesn’t fix the issues, at the bare minimum, the company needs to open the entire infrastructure up to third-party auditors to verify its claims. Ring seems to agree, as they told us that, “Ring conducts rigorous security reviews of all products before launch and critical components of TAKE’s infrastructure underwent independent security testing prior to launch. We are exploring options for further independent review.”

TAKE is not end-to-end encryption, where Ring would never have access to the keys, and the company thankfully doesn’t claim it as such. Ring already offers the option for end-to-end encryption, and turning that on by default would offer the real sorts of privacy improvements we all want from video doorbells. 

Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly relying on spying technologies—automated license plate readers (ALPR), cell-site simulators, and facial recognition, to name a few--causing an outcry in many communities where people are rightly concerned about the threat to civil rights and civil liberties these tools present.

Some authorities are responding to these concerns by trying to hide what they’re doing. Police departments are telling officers not to mention ALPRs when stopping vehicles and concealing their use of ALPRs to avoid citizens’ public records requests. Concealing the use of unpopular spying tools isn’t anything particularly new for law enforcement—cops have been doing it for years—but it’s just as wrong now as it was 20 years ago.

These practices prevent the public from knowing about and questioning how agencies are spending taxpayer dollars on spying technologies and holding them accountable. This is especially troubling when many towns are signing contracts with Flock and other ALPR vendors with little to no public oversight. The practice also violates disclosure obligations, allows cops and prosecutors to hide their tactics from judges, and cheats defendants from being able to challenge the use of evidence gathered by spy tech from being used against them.

404 Media recently revealed that in its usage policy for Flock ALPR cameras, one county in Iowa tells police to keep them a secret when detaining people: “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE,” the policy document reads. “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.” If writing a report about an incident, police are told to say they used “county resources” in making a stop instead of acknowledging use of ALPRs.

In Houston, police officers are likewise instructed to “be as vague as permissible” about why they are using Flock because the searches they run on Flock’s surveillance system could be obtained via public records requests.

There is growing public alarm about the threat to civil liberties posed by ALPR cameras and reports of police abusing the tech by using it to spy on their exes. Some cities have the cameras covered up, and others are cancelling their use of ALPR networks. Two states have recently stepped back from ALPRs. This trend is certainly not lost on law enforcement agencies. Hiding the fact that they’re using ALPRs from Flock and other vendors is one way of avoiding scrutiny and bad PR.

But law enforcement and their spy tech vendors keeping people in the dark about the surveillance technologies trained on them predates the Flock backlash by decades. For example, AT&T built a powerful phone surveillance tool for police, called Hemisphere, in the mid 2000s, and the company required agencies not to use evidence gathered by Hemisphere in court unless there was no other admissible evidence. If evidence obtained through Hemisphere was used, police were required to recreate it through a traditional subpoena, a process they called “parallel construction.” We called it “evidence laundering.”

Likewise, police and prosecutors have taken far-reaching steps to hide from the public and courts their use of cell site simulators, also known as stingrays. Police have used these devices, which trick cell phones into connecting to them instead of phone towers to try locating suspects, to obtain people’s location data without a warrant by deceptively obtaining basic pen register orders from courts. Pen register orders are for obtaining call log data and police don’t need to prove they have probable cause to get one.

In Baltimore, for example, a judge concluded that law enforcement had used a standard pen register order to intentionally hide its use of a Stingray from the court in violation of its legal disclosure obligations, leading to a landmark 2015 privacy ruling that cops need a warrant to use the device.

That didn’t stop police from continuing to try to pull the wool over the eyes of courts and defense attorneys when they used stingrays, however. Prosecutors have accepted plea deals to hide their use of cell-site simulators and have even dropped cases rather than reveal information about their use of the technology. U.S. Marshalls have driven files hundreds of miles to thwart public records requests.

Fortunately, our commitment to shining a light on the use of surveillance tech is just as strong, if not stronger, than law enforcement’s quest to hide it. We’re working with privacy advocates and community groups to bring awareness about existing and emerging spy tools that threaten civil liberties and we’re encouraging policymakers and lawmakers to do more to restrain warrantless mass surveillance and stop it before it ever takes hold.  

If you're curious about whether your local police have contracts for ALPRS or other surveillance technologies, you can search EFF's Atlas of Surveillance.

 

This week, EFF, along with Big Brother Watch, Defend Digital Me, Liberty, Open Rights Group, Race Equality First, Statewatch, and Stopwatch, wrote to Nottinghamshire Police Force in the UK raising concern about the proposed roll-out of live facial recognition technology (LFR), and called for its immediate halt.

In particular, the letter highlights six concerns:

LFR Is Not "Just Another Tool"

Nottinghamshire Police has stated that “facial recognition is just another tool to fight crime.” But LFR used in public spaces is an incredibly intrusive biometric mass surveillance technology that scans the faces of everyone who walks past the camera and takes biometric face prints. This is not just another tool, but a major escalation of surveillance that treats everyone as a suspect by default.

People Having "Nothing to Worry About" Does Not Hold to Scrutiny 

According to Nottinghamshire Police, “if you aren’t entering the city or county to commit crime then you have nothing to worry about.” However, many people have legitimate concerns about the normalisation of invasive technologies. So a public that cannot move around their towns and cities without being subjected to a biometric identity check may be less willing to seek medical care or legal advice, speak with journalists, act in a union, vote, protest, or express their gender, sexual or religious identity. 

Disproportionate Targeting With LFR

We are particularly concerned to learn that Nottinghamshire Police could deploy LFR to tackle low level crimes, such as youth behavior deemed anti-social, as part of Operation View. Reporting suggests that the force already possesses “a watchlist of young people believed to be causing the most problems,” including children as young as 11 years old. It would be highly disproportionate to deploy live facial recognition to tackle this behaviour. Many of these children are reportedly known to the police, and it is highly likely that there are more proportionate means for locating them. 

LFR Could Increase Social Problems

We are also concerned that Nottinghamshire Police has not adequately examined the distinct risks of using LFR to target children, including negative impacts on their behaviour and outcomes, risk of recidivism, and relationship with the police. Use of LFR could exacerbate behavioural problems in children and create an adversarial, rather than trusting, relationship with the police from a young age. 

Lack of Public Support 

Recent polling commissioned by Liberty indicated that 48% of people oppose scanning the faces of those walking on high streets when there is no suspected imminent threat. Furthermore, Opinium found that the majority of people oppose the use of facial recognition in schools. Likewise, a report by the London Policing Ethics Panel found that Londoners aged 16-24 were most likely to find the Metropolitan Police Service’s use of LFR unacceptable and most likely to stay away from events where LFR was in use.

On these grounds, Nottinghamshire Police must immediately halt their plans to use live facial recognition surveillance any further.

Read our full letter here. 

Flock Safety, the embattled vendor of mass surveillance technology, has rolled out a handful of new reforms intended to appease the justified nationwide anger that has seen scores of towns cancel or suspend their contracts with the company for automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The reforms are a combination of long overdue changes along with some cosmetic fixes that fail to address the fundamental dangers of this technology.  

We should not be letting companies decide how much privacy we deserve.

So, what do these reforms actually do?  

The most consequential is Flock’s default setting of an optional 7-day retention period for ALPR data, down from its original default optional 30-day retention period. This means if police want to retain data beyond the duration of their retention setting, they need to access “Evidence Mode,” i.e., when the desired data is associated with an active investigation and not just a fishing expedition. This is significant because, in at least some circumstances, Flock has previously charged its customers to extend their retention period. So, while towns can likely easily flip the switch to longer retention periods, it might come with a price tag some cities will be unwilling to pay.  

Flock also has two other, likely easier-to-bypass reforms. The first is offense filtering so that cities can enable other departments to access their ALPR data only if they are investigating certain crimes, e.g., murder or robbery but not immigration-related investigations. The second is supposedly beefing up their audit feature and proactively locking out officers who file suspicious requests for data. The major problem here is the fact that Flock’s enhanced audit and transparency tools help to address a problem that Flock itself has created—an abusable mass surveillance system that tracks all cars all the time.  

In addition to these reforms, there is also a tone shift coming from Flock’s CEO, Garrett Langley. Langley went from calling the DeFlock movement “terrorists” (which he has since apologized for) and saying that the wave of anti-surveillance anger was more about the current federal administration than it was specifically about his company, to a more conciliatory tone that acknowledges some of the problems of dangerous surveillance, mission creep, and police abuse.  Just look at this report from the BBC:  

“Historically, my point of view as a chief executive of a private company was, I don't know if I should be making these decisions. I don't know if it's my job to say how long data should be retained,” Langley said. 

He added that he has come to agree with groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation that police should need an active case number to search Flock's data. 

“They're right. I think it should be required.” 

To be clear, our position has long been that police, at a minimum, need to get a warrant, signed by a judge, in order to search for historic ALPR data regarding specific vehicles. For us, it’s common sense: if police want to dip into historic ALPR data like they were going back in time to retroactively follow your comings and goings, they need a warrant.  

Fundamentally, these reforms leave us wondering: what is stopping Flock from reversing course on them if their law enforcement customers respond by defecting to another ALPR vendor? Nothing.  

This all leads to the bigger and more important issue: We should not be letting companies decide how much privacy we deserve. If our privacy is determined by how much surveillance technology vendors decide is too much surveillance, then we’re really out of luck. It shouldn’t be up to Flock or any other ALPR vendor to decide how long police can collect and retain data on millions, if not hundreds of millions, of innocent people. We need lawmakers to step up and pass laws that restrict police’s use of surveillance technology. After all, the surveillance business model is the problem, and a few company-imposed slapdash reforms aren’t going to change that.

The concept of “surveillance pricing” is just one part of a much larger problem and business model: corporations maximizing their profits by invading our privacy. The all-too-common business model is to systematically harvest, collate, and store as much of our personal data as possible, and then monetize it through use and sale. When it comes to surveillance pricing, that looks like corporations offering the same product to two different people at two different prices, based on harvested personal information. That's why EFF supports A.B. 2654, authored by Assemblymember Chris Ward, which bans this harmful practice. 

As an organization based in San Francisco, EFF was proud to learn that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors had also introduced a resolution to similarly support the legislation. However,  we were disappointed to learn the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has since stalled a vote on the resolution stating their own support for A.B. 2654 after receiving an email from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce criticizing the bill using well-worn and debunked concerns. We’ve sent the Supervisors a letter asking them to reconsider.

Banning surveillance pricing would be good for consumers. The FTC has found that companies will set higher prices based on personal information. “For instance,” the FTC found last year, “if a consumer is profiled as a new parent, the consumer may intentionally be shown higher-priced baby thermometers on the first page of their in-app search results, based on their residential zip code and time of purchase.” Let's say that again: the U.S. government has found that companies may seek to use surveillance pricing to charge parents searching for a thermometer in the middle of the night more money in a time of need.

Privacy is a human right, not something that people should understand as a currency to give away or protect based on how it will impact the price of groceries. EFF has long opposed pay-for-privacy schemes, in which a company charges a higher price to a customer who refuses to submit to processing of their personal data. Surveillance pricing is another version of that practice. You should never have to worry that your privacy rights depend on how much you make.

At a time when prices for everyday goods continue to climb, some surveillance pricing defenders note that using personal information could lead to lower prices for some consumers. Yet some recent studies indicate there will be losers and winners  based on factors such as whether a consumer is willing or able to switch products. Who loses or wins also will turn on the accuracy of the underlying data – yet surveillance pricing is often based on false information.

That said, even if surveillance pricing has the capability to lead to lower prices (which it often doesn't) we oppose it as just another way that corporations try to make customers pay for their privacy.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce’s concerns are fully addressed in the text of A.B. 2654. The Chamber raises questions about how businesses will comply with the law. But the bill is quite clear: “a retailer shall not engage in surveillance pricing.” It also has a clear definition of what “surveillance pricing” is. The banned practice is defined as: “[i] a customized price for a good for a specific consumer or group of consumers, [ii] based, in whole or in part, on personally identifiable information collected through electronic surveillance,” including if that information is “acquired from a third party.” In other words, “surveillance pricing” is a customized price based on personal information.

The SF  Chamber’s letter also asks about the bill's “treatment of discounts and loyalty programs.” In this way, too, A.B. 2654 is quite clear. The bill includes three broad carveouts that ensure it doesn't disrupt loyalty programs and discounts:

• First, for price differences “based solely on costs associated with providing the good to different consumers.”
• Second, for a discount offered to a consumer who is taking steps to terminate a service.
• Third, for a discount, conspicuously posted on a retailer’s website, that is uniformly available based on (1) criteria anyone can meet, such as signing up for a mailing list, (2) membership in a broadly defined group, such as seniors, or (3) participation in a loyalty program.

An opt-in senior discount to the movies is not the problem. The systematic collection of all of our personal information to determine whether someone is a senior and if so whether they should pay more or less for that matinee is. 

As we said in our blog post outlining our support for this bill:

Surveillance pricing is very similar to online behavioral advertising, a business practice that EFF urges governments to ban. Both practices incentivize all businesses to collect as much of our personal data as possible, in order to later monetize it. Both practices lead some businesses to collate and store our data into dossiers about us for later use. Both practices use these surveillance-based dossiers to manipulate and limit our economic choices, by altering the advertisements and prices we see online.

We urge the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to join the coalition of groups that support A.B. 2564, and stand against companies mining our personal information to charge us different prices for the same thing. 

You can read our letter to the Supervisors here.

For years, civil society organizations, workers, journalists, and human rights experts have warned that major technology companies risk enabling grave human rights abuses when they provide cloud computing, AI, and surveillance infrastructure to governments implicated in violations of international and humanitarian law. While many companies pay lip service to evaluating customers and contracts for human rights implications (lip service Exhibit A: Palantir!), too often those processes fail to provide any meaningful accountability when their standards are not met or are simply ignored. But recent developments at Microsoft suggest that accountability for failing to uphold the human rights standards that a company itself sets, even if incomplete, is possible. 

According to recent reporting, Microsoft’s Israel chief has departed amid an escalating ethical controversy surrounding the company’s business relationships with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The move follows months of scrutiny, internal dissent, and sustained pressure from inside the organization along with press and civil society, especially after a report by The Guardian revealed that Microsoft technologies were used in systems connected to mass surveillance and military targeting operations in Gaza in ways that appeared to violate Microsoft’s own standards. This did not happen overnight.

In September 2025, Microsoft reportedly suspended certain services after initial investigations raised serious concerns about how its cloud and AI infrastructure may have been used. That alone distinguished Microsoft from many of its peers. Rather than simply dismissing mounting concerns or hiding behind vague claims of neutrality, Microsoft appeared to recognize that providing technology in conflict settings creates real human rights responsibilities. Now, after additional investigation and continued public scrutiny, it appears the company has taken another step, one that should send a strong signal to others that violating Microsoft’s human rights commitments could cost you your job. This is important. 

There is still much more Microsoft should do, of course. The company has yet to fully disclose the scope of its findings, explain exactly which services were suspended, or clarify what safeguards remain in place to prevent its technologies from contributing to human rights abuses in the future. We shouldn’t have to infer the connection between this employment action and the company’s investigation. 

Just prior to reports that Microsoft had fired its Israel Country General Manager, EFF joined Access Now, Amnesty International, Fight for the Future, and 7amleh in a joint May 7, 2026 letter to Microsoft leadership calling on the company to publicly release the findings of its investigation, suspend business relationships tied to serious human rights abuses, and implement meaningful safeguards to prevent its technologies from contributing to further harm. The letter detailed allegations regarding Microsoft’s reported provision of Azure cloud and AI services to Israeli military and intelligence units involved in surveillance and targeting operations, while also pressing the company to take concrete human rights due diligence measures going forward. Those demands remain urgent, even as Microsoft appears to be taking some of the steps we urged.

But even as we push for more, it is important to recognize when a company takes steps in the right direction. Because this is what it means to put human rights commitments into practice. It means acknowledging that human rights policies are not just branding exercises or transparency reports. It means accepting that companies providing cloud infrastructure and AI services have responsibilities when credible evidence emerges that their technologies may be enabling violations of international law. And it means taking concrete action when those risks become known.

The allegations facing Microsoft are serious. Human rights organizations and investigative reporting have documented claims that Microsoft Azure services were used by Israeli military and intelligence units to process large-scale surveillance data, support AI-assisted targeting systems, and sustain military cloud infrastructure during the war in Gaza. The concerns raised extend beyond ordinary business risk; they implicate potential complicity in violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

Faced with these allegations, Microsoft could have chosen the path many tech companies take: deny everything, attack critics, suppress worker dissent, and continue business as usual. Instead, the company appears to have begun responding to the evidence.

Technology companies are not powerless bystanders. Cloud providers and AI companies make choices every day about who gets access to their infrastructure, under what conditions, and with what oversight. When companies claim to uphold human rights principles, those commitments should have operational consequences. Too many companies, in both international and domestic policing contexts, provide technology to institutions that violate people’s human rights and civil liberties, then fall back on the claim that they are merely providing a service that their customers can use how they see fit. This is an ethical failing that falls short of most companies’ publicly expressed commitments. Microsoft’s recent actions suggest that sustained public pressure, worker organizing, investigative journalism, and civil society advocacy can force even the world’s largest technology companies to respond.

Google and Amazon should especially see this as a clear example to follow. Both companies also provide services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense and have faced years of criticism over those contracts and services, including from EFF. Yet neither has demonstrated the level of responsiveness or accountability that Microsoft has shown. If Microsoft can suspend services, investigate allegations, and make leadership changes amid mounting evidence and ethical concerns, then other cloud giants can no longer pretend that meaningful action is impossible.

The technology industry has spent years insisting that ethics and human rights matter. The real test has always been whether those principles survive when profits, government contracts, and geopolitical pressure are on the line. Microsoft’s recent steps are not the end of that story, but they may mark the beginning of what real accountability can look like.

We’re looking at you, Amazon and Google. If Microsoft can do it, why can’t you?

This is the third installment of a blog series reflecting on the global digital legacy of the 2011 Arab uprisings. You can read the first post here, and the second here.

When people recall the 2011 uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), they often picture crowded squares, raised phones, and the feeling that the internet had finally shifted the balance of power toward ordinary people. But the past decade and a half is also a story about how governments, companies, and platforms turned those same tools into the backbone of a powerful state surveillance apparatus.

For activists, journalists, everyday users, that means now living with a constant threat. The phone in your pocket, the platforms you organize on, and the systems you rely on for safety and connection can be weaponized at the flip of a switch. A global surveillance industry has treated repression by many MENA governments as a growth opportunity, and the tactics refined there now shape digital authoritarianism worldwide. This essay traces how that shift unfolded: security agencies upgraded older systems of repression with new surveillance tools and permanent monitoring infrastructure; cybercrime laws and mercenary spyware markets turned digital control into standard operating procedure; and biometrics, facial recognition, and ‘smart city’ projects laid the groundwork for AI‑driven surveillance that now shapes protests, borders, and everyday life far beyond the region. 

Remembering the Arab Spring means seeing the events of 2011 as both a remarkable moment of movement history when people leveraged networked tools in their fight for freedom and the beginning of a long, grinding effort to turn those same tools into mechanisms of state control.

Old‑School Repression, New‑School Tools

Long before Facebook and Twitter, regimes in countries like Egypt and Syria already knew how to crush dissent. They leaned on informant networks, physical surveillance, and wiretaps, backed by emergency laws that let security agencies monitor and detain critics with almost no restraint. Research on the use of surveillance technology in MENA shows that, even before the Arab Spring, states were layering early digital tools like internet monitoring, deep packet inspection, and interception centers on top of that older machinery of control.

At the same time, connectivity was racing ahead. Cheap smartphones and social media suddenly let people share information at scale, coordinate protests, and broadcast abuses in real time. In 2011, EFF described both the excitement around “Facebook revolutions” and the early signs that governments were scrambling to upgrade their capacity to watch and disorganize popular dissent.

After the uprisings, Western critics endlessly debated how much credit to give social media itself. While in the background, security agencies across several MENA states reached a much simpler conclusion: if networked communication can help topple a dictator, then they needed to embed themselves deep inside those networks. Analyses of the rise of digital authoritarianism in MENA show how quickly officials pivoted from being surprised by online organizing to building systems to monitor and pre‑empt it.

In the years after 2011, governments across the region poured money into tools that let them systematically watch what people said and did on major platforms. Foreign vendors set up monitoring centers and interception systems that let security agencies block tens of thousands of sites, scrape and analyze social media at scale, monitor activist pages and online communities, and track activists in real time. They built a new, pre‑emptive model of digital control, one that assumes the state should see as much as possible, as early as possible.

As we noted in 2011, exporting permanent surveillance infrastructure to already‑abusive governments doesn’t “modernize” public safety; it locks in an architecture of control that is primed to abuse dissidents, journalists, and marginalized communities.

Domestic Lawfare and Cyber-Mercenaries

After the uprisings, a number of governments also rewrote the rules that govern online life. Cybercrime laws, “fake news” provisions, and overbroad public‑order and ‘morality’ offences gave prosecutors and security agencies legal cover to act with impunity. Governments in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Jordan, and Egypt combined counterterrorism, cybercrime, defamation, and protest laws into a legal thicket designed to make online dissent feel dangerous and costly. Morality laws and cybercrime provisions are used to target queer and trans people based on identity and expression.​

At the United Nations, a new global cybercrime convention now risks baking this logic into international law. The convention was adopted by the UN General Assembly in late 2024, despite serious human rights concerns raised by civil society. Echoing our partners, EFF warned at the time that the UN cybercrime draft convention remained too flawed to adopt and urged states to reject the draft language because it legitimized expansive surveillance powers and criminalized legitimate expression, security research, and everyday digital practices around the world. While on paper, these instruments gesture to “public safety” objectives, in practice they function as pathways for state security agencies to monitor, prosecute, and silence the communities most at risk. For state-targeted communities, that makes being visible online a calculated risk, not a neutral choice.​​

Criminal codes are only half the story; mercenary tech is the other. As governments worldwide looked for ways to outpace their critics, a parallel market emerged to help them infiltrate and take over devices. Companies like NSO Group marketed Pegasus and similar tools as off‑the‑shelf capabilities for governments that wanted to hack a target’s cellphones or other devices to read messages, turn on microphones, and monitor entire social networks while bypassing the courts. 

In 2019, UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye called for a global moratorium on the sale and transfer of private surveillance tools until real, enforceable safeguards exist. Two years later, forensic work by Amnesty and media partners showed how the same spyware used to hack phones of Palestinian human‑rights defenders was used to surveil journalists, activists, lawyers, and political opponents across dozens of countries. 

Regional groups responded by demanding an end to the sale of surveillance technology to autocratic governments and security agencies, arguing that you cannot keep selling “lawful intercept” tools into systems where law itself is an instrument of repression. Commercial spyware is at the center of digital repression, not at its margins. Surveillance vendors are not neutral suppliers. Safeguards remain weak, fragmented, or nonexistent in most of the countries buying these tools, yet vendors continue seeking new contracts and new militarized “use cases.” Put bluntly, the companies that design, market, and maintain these systems precisely because they enable this kind of control profit from (and help entrench) authoritarian power.

Biometrics, Facial Recognition, and AI‑Powered Surveillance Cities

On top of this rapidly intensifying interception and spyware stack, governments and companies began layering biometrics and face recognition into everyday systems, creating pathways for bulk data collection, automated analysis, and risk profiling. In parts of MENA, national ID schemes, border and migration controls, and centralized biometric databases have been rolled out in environments with weak or captured data‑protection laws, making it easy to link people’s movements, services, and political activity to a single, persistent identifier.​

Humanitarian programs are not exempt from this protocol. In Jordan, Syrian refugees have been required to submit iris scans and biometric data to access cash assistance and food, turning “consent” into a precondition for survival. When access to aid depends on enrollment in centralized biometric systems, any breach, misuse, or repurposing of that data can have severe, life‑altering consequences for people who have no realistic way to opt out. Investigations into surveillance‑tech firms complicit in abuses in MENA show that vendors profit from supplying biometric and surveillance tools for migration management and internal security, even when those tools are used in discriminatory or abusive ways.​

Like elsewhere, mass surveillance technologies in MENA were first piloted on people who were already criminalized or made vulnerable by poverty. But their use quickly expanded from narrow, security‑framed deployments to routine use in city streets. As hardware sensors, cameras, and data storage got cheaper, “smart city” surveillance systems promised seamless security and services, and it became easier and less politically contentious to keep these systems running everywhere, all the time.​

Unlike targeted hacking tools, these broad, city‑wide surveillance infrastructures erase any practical line between people under investigation and the broad public, normalizing bulk, indiscriminate monitoring of public space and everyday movement. In the Gulf, facial recognition and dense sensor networks are increasingly built into high‑profile “smart city” and mega‑project plans that lean heavily on biometric and AI‑driven monitoring. These are security‑first development projects where biometric and sensor infrastructures are designed from the outset to embed policing, migration control, and commercial tracking into the urban fabric. In this vision of the Gulf’s “smart city” future—often sold as seamless services and digital opportunity—“smart” is the branding, and pervasive monitoring is the operating principle.​​

EFF has consistently opposed government use of face recognition and biometric surveillance, in some instances calling for outright bans. In contexts that treat peaceful dissent as a security threat, embedding biometric surveillance into everyday infrastructure locks in a balance of power that favors militarized policing and state control. That infrastructure is now the starting point for a new set of risks. Surveillance systems built over the last decade are being repackaged as the foundation for a new generation of “AI‑enabled” defense and security products. 

Companies that once focused on video management or perimeter security now advertise “defense applications” for AI‑driven situational awareness and threat detection, using computer‑vision models to scan camera feeds, compare against existing watchlists, and flag “suspicious” people or behaviors in real time. Drone and sensor platforms are being upgraded with embedded AI that tracks and classifies targets autonomously and with “drone‑based AI threat detection and intelligent situational awareness,” turning aerial surveillance into a continuous data feed for security agencies and militaries. In smart‑city and defense expos from the Gulf to Europe and North America, similar systems are marketed as neutral efficiency upgrades or tools to “protect critical infrastructure,” even where they are explicitly designed to scale up border enforcement, protest surveillance, and internal security operations.

As these systems are folded into AI‑driven defense products, the line between “civilian” infrastructure and militarized surveillance disappears, turning streets, borders, and aid sites into continuous input for security operations. That is the landscape that human rights and accountability efforts now have to confront.

Templates of Control, Networks of Resistance

The patterns established in heavily securitized MENA states after the Arab Spring now shape how states monitor and crush more recent uprisings, from Iran’s use of location data and facial recognition to track down protesters to long‑running crackdowns elsewhere in the region. This model of “digital authoritarianism” built on spyware, data‑hungry ID systems, platform control, and emergency‑style security laws has emerged everywhere from Latin America to Eastern Europe to here in the United States. As the new UN Cybercrime Convention moves toward implementation, its broad offences and surveillance powers risk turning this ad hoc toolkit into a formal template for cross‑border data‑sharing, repression, and an all‑purpose global surveillance instrument.

For people on the ground, none of this is theoretical. Human‑rights defenders, journalists, and ordinary users across the region face arrest, long prison sentences, and exile based on their digital traces. In that context, commercial spyware is not a marginal issue but part of the core machinery of repression. Pegasus has been used to hack journalists’ phones through zero‑click exploits and compromise human‑rights defenders and watchdog organizations themselves, including staff at Amnesty’s Pegasus Project partners and Human Rights Watch. These deployments give practical effect to the “cybercrime” and “terrorism” frameworks described earlier: person‑by‑person campaigns against particular communities, contacts, and networks, rather than “neutral,” generalized security measures.

Under these conditions, everyday security becomes a second job. People describe carrying multiple phones, keeping one for relatively “clean” uses and others for riskier conversations, splitting identities across platforms, using coded language, and moving their organizing off mainstream services when possible. Pushing this burden onto users is a political choice: states, platforms, and vendors could build systems that are safe by design; instead, they externalize risk to the people they watch and punish.

Even against that backdrop, civil society organizations have refused to capitulate to security agencies and vendors. Regional coalitions have demanded strict export controls and outright bans on selling intrusive surveillance tech to autocratic governments. Advocates have also pushed companies to do more than box‑ticking “due diligence.” Work with surveillance‑tech firms in the context of migration and border control has repeatedly shown that most are still far from serious human‑rights assessments, let alone willing to turn down these lucrative contracts.

Many of the same governments that have been critical of others on the issue of human rights have hosted or licensed companies that build these tools, in some cases buying similar capabilities for their own security agencies. European authorities, for instance, have investigated FinFisher’s export of spyware “made in Germany” to Turkey and other non‑EU governments. Meanwhile, the NSO Group has at least 22 Pegasus contracts with security and law‑enforcement agencies in 12 EU countries. This is a transnational industry, not a localized problem.

Against near impossible odds, people continue finding pathways to freedom. The global surveillance sector reinforces the same hierarchies and violence that people have found ways to survive for generations. Queer activists and others at the sharpest edges of this system have had to develop their own forms of resistance, including against biometric and data‑driven targeting. Encryption, circumvention tools, and security training are not silver bullets, but they remain essential for anyone trying to organize, document abuses, or simply exist online with a bit less risk. Resources like EFF’s Surveillance Self‑Defense are one piece of that ecosystem, alongside trainers and groups who have been doing this work on the ground for years.​

Defending the Future of Digital Dissent

The Arab Spring is often remembered through images of packed squares and hopeful tweets. But contending with its aftermath means confronting the surveillance architecture built in its shadow: laws that turn online speech into a crime, spyware and biometric systems that turn phones and faces into tracking beacons, and platform practices that routinely sacrifice the people most at risk. None of that is inevitable, and none of it is confined to one part of the world.

Accountability has to reach both governments and the companies that profit from arming them with these tools. That means pushing for far stronger limits on how surveillance tech is built, sold, and deployed; demanding meaningful transparency when these systems are used; and defending the tools people rely on to communicate and organize safely, including robust encryption and secure channels. It also means taking direction from the people and communities who have been navigating and resisting this landscape for years.

Surveillance itself is transnational: tools, playbooks, and data moves across borders as easily as money. And so we, too, continue our work, documenting abuses, sharing security knowledge, and collectively organizing against these violent systems.

​This is the third installment of a blog series reflecting on the global digital legacy of the 2011 Arab uprisings. Read the rest of the series here.

In late 2024, we urged Google and Amazon to honor their human rights commitments, to be more transparent with the public, and to take meaningful action to address the risks posed by Project Nimbus, their cloud computing contract that includes Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Israeli Security Agency. Since then, a stream of additional reporting has reinforced that our concerns were well-founded. Yet despite mounting evidence of serious risk, both companies have refused to take action. 

Amazon has completely ignored our original and follow-up letters. Google, meanwhile, has repeatedly promised to respond to our questions. Yet more than a year and a half later, we have seen no meaningful action by either company. Neither approach is acceptable given the human rights commitments these companies have made.

Additionally, Microsoft required a public leak before it felt compelled enough to look into and find that its client, the Israeli government, was indeed misusing its services in ways that violated Microsoft’s public commitments to human rights. This should have given both Google and Amazon an additional reason to take a close look and let the public know what they find, but nothing of the sort materialized. 

In such circumstances, waiting for definitive proof is not responsible risk management, it is willful blindness.

Google: Known Risks, No Meaningful Action

Google’s own internal assessments warned of the risks associated with Project Nimbus even before the contract was signed. Major news outlets have reported that Google provides the Israeli government with advanced cloud and AI services under Project Nimbus, including large-scale data storage, image and video analysis, and AI model development tools. These capabilities are exceptionally powerful, highly adaptable, and well suited for surveillance and military applications.

Despite those warnings, and the multiple reports since then about human rights abuses by the very portions of the Israeli government that uses Google’s and Amazon’s services, the companies continue to operate business as usual. It seems that they have taken the position that they do not need to change course or even publicly explain themselves unless the media or other external organizations present definitive proof that their tools have been used in specific violations of international human rights or humanitarian law. While that conclusive public evidence has not yet emerged for all the companies, the risks are obvious, and they are aware of them. Instead of conducting robust, transparent human rights due diligence, Amazon and Google are continually choosing to look the other way.

Google’s own internal assessments undermine its public posture. According to reporting, Google’s lawyers and policy staff warned that Google Cloud services could be linked to the facilitation of human rights abuses. In the same report, Google employees also raised concerns that the company’s cloud and AI tools could be used for surveillance or other militarized purposes, which seems very likely given the Israeli government’s long-standing reliance on advanced data-driven systems to control and monitor Palestinians.

Google has publicly claimed that Project Nimbus is “not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads” and is governed by its standard Acceptable Use Policies. Yet reporting has revealed conflicting representations about the contract’s terms, including indications that the Israeli government may be permitted to use any services offered in Google’s cloud catalog for any purpose. Google has declined to publicly resolve these contradictions, and its lack of transparency is problematic. The gap between what Google says publicly and what it knows internally should alarm anyone who hopes to take the company’s human rights commitments seriously.

Google’s and Amazon’s AI Principles Require Proactive Action

Even after being revised last year, Google’s AI Principles continue to commit the company to responsible development and deployment of its technologies, including implementing appropriate human oversight, due diligence, and safeguards to mitigate harmful outcomes and align with widely accepted principles of international law and human rights. While the updated principles no longer explicitly commit Google to avoiding entire categories of harmful use, they still require the company to assess foreseeable risks, employ rigorous monitoring and mitigation measures, and act responsibly throughout the full lifecycle of AI development and deployment.

Amazon has similarly committed to responsible AI practices through its Responsible AI framework for AWS services. The company states that it aims to integrate responsible AI considerations across the full lifecycle of AI design, development and operation, emphasizing safeguards such as fairness, explainability, privacy and security, safety, transparency, and governance. Amazon also says its AI services are designed with mechanisms for monitoring, and risk mitigation to help prevent harmful outputs or misuse and to enable responsible deployment across a range of use cases.

Google and Amazon have the knowledge, the leverage, and the responsibility to act now. Choosing not to is still a choice.

Here, the risks are neither speculative nor remote. They are foreseeable, well-documented, and exacerbated by the context in which Project Nimbus operates, which is an ongoing military campaign marked by widespread civilian harm and credible allegations of grave human rights violations including genocide. In such circumstances, waiting for definitive proof is not responsible risk management, it is willful blindness.

Modern cloud and AI systems are designed to be flexible, customizable, and deployable at scale, often beyond the vendor’s direct visibility. That reality is precisely why human rights due diligence must be proactive. Waiting for a leaked document or whistleblower account demonstrating direct misuse, as occurred in Microsoft’s case, means waiting until harm has already been done.

Microsoft’s Experience Should Have Been Warning Enough

As noted above, the recent revelations about Microsoft’s technologies being misused in violation of Microsoft’s commitments by the Israeli military illustrate the dangers of this wait-and-see approach. Google and Amazon should not need a similar incident to recognize what is at stake. The demonstrated misuse of comparable technologies, combined with Google’s and Amazon’s own knowledge of the risks associated with Project Nimbus, should already be sufficient to trigger action.

The appropriate response is to act responsibly and proactively.

Google and Amazon should immediately:

• Conduct and publish an independent human rights impact assessment of Project Nimbus.
• Disclose how they evaluate, monitor, and enforce compliance with their AI Principles in high-risk government contracts, including and especially in Project Nimbus.
• Commit to suspending or restricting services where there is a credible risk of serious human rights harm, even if definitive proof of misuse has not yet emerged.

Waiting Is a Choice, and Not One That Protects Human Rights

Google and Amazon publicly emphasize their commitment to responsible AI and respect for human rights. Those commitments are meaningless if they apply only once harm is undeniable and irreversible. In conflict settings, especially where secrecy and information asymmetry are the norm, companies must act on credible risk, not perfect evidence.

Google and Amazon have the knowledge, the leverage, and the responsibility to act now. Choosing not to is still a choice, and one that carries real consequences for people whose lives are already at risk.

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.