Activities of Judith SARGENTINI related to 2014/2232(INI)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on ‘Human rights and technology: the impact of intrusion and surveillance systems on human rights in third countries’ PDF (162 KB) DOC (113 KB)
Amendments (29)
Amendment 1 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 3 a (new)
Citation 3 a (new)
- having regard to the ICT Sector Guide on Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, published by the European Commission in June 2013,
Amendment 5 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 17 a (new)
Citation 17 a (new)
- having regard to the decisions of the 19th Plenary Meeting of the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies held in Vienna on 3-4 December 2013,
Amendment 32 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F a (new)
Recital F a (new)
Fa. whereas intrusion and surveillance systems may also negatively impact on the human rights of EU citizens when residing or travelling abroad;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H a (new)
Recital H a (new)
Ha. whereas the 3-4 December 2013 Wassenaar Arrangement plenary meeting agreed to new export controls in the areas of surveillance and law enforcement/intelligence gathering tools and Internet Protocol (IP) network surveillance systems or equipment, which, under certain conditions, may be detrimental to international and regional security and stability;
Amendment 38 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H b (new)
Recital H b (new)
Hb. whereas EU-based companies have an important share of the global market in ICTs, in particular when it comes to exporting surveillance, tracking, intrusion and monitoring technology;
Amendment 39 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H c (new)
Recital H c (new)
Hc. whereas the introduction of export controls should not harm legitimate research into IT security issues and the development of IT security tools without criminal intent;
Amendment 42 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Recognises that human rights and fundamental freedoms are universal and should be defended globally; stresses that the surveillance of communications, as such, interferes with the rights to privacy and expression and thereby threatens the very foundations of democratic society, if conducted outside an adequate legal framework;
Amendment 44 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Calls on the Commission to ensure coherence between the EU’s external actions and its internal policies related to ICTs, and its commitments and obligations in the field of human rights;
Amendment 45 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2a. Believes that mass surveillance of citizens and the spying on political leaders by the US NSA with the active complicity of certain EU Member States, as revealed by Edward Snowden, have caused serious damage to the credibility of the EU's human rights policy and have undermined global trust in the benefits of ICTs;
Amendment 46 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2b. Reminds the Member States and EU agencies, including Europol and Eurojust, of their obligations under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, international human rights law and of the EU's external policy objectives, which forbid them to share intelligence data which might lead to human rights violations in a third country or to use information obtained as a result of a human rights violation, such as unlawful surveillance, outside the EU;
Amendment 48 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Stresses that the role of ICTs should be mainstreamed in all EU policies and programmes to advance human rights protection; and the promotion of democracy, the rule of law and good governance as well as peaceful conflict resolution;
Amendment 52 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Calls for the active development and dissemination of technologies that help protect human rights and facilitate people´s digital freedoms and security; in particular, urges the EU and its Member States to actively promote the use and development of open standards and free and open-source software and cryptographic technologies;
Amendment 67 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Draws attention to the plight of whistleblowers and their supporters, including journalists following their revelations of abusive surveillance practices in third countries; believes that such individuals should be considered as human rights defenders and therefore that they deserve the protection by the EU as required under the EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders; reiterates its call on the Commission and the Member States to thoroughly examine the possibility of granting whistleblowers international protection from prosecution;
Amendment 68 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 b (new)
Paragraph 5 b (new)
5b. Deplores that security measures, including counterterrorism measures, are increasingly used as pretexts for the violation of the right to privacy and for clamping down on the legitimate activities of human rights defenders, journalists and political activists; reiterates its strong belief that national security can never be a justification for untargeted, secret or mass surveillance programmes; insists that such measures be pursued strictly in line with rule of law and human rights standards, including the right to privacy and data protection;
Amendment 69 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5 c (new)
Paragraph 5 c (new)
5c. Calls on the EEAS and the Commission to promote the democratic oversight of security and intelligence services in its political dialogue with third countries as well as in its development cooperation programmes; urges the Commission to support civil society organizations and legislative bodies in third countries aiming at enhancing scrutiny, transparency and accountability of domestic security services; calls for specific commitments thereon to be included in the future EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democratisation;
Amendment 79 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Urges the EU to counter the criminalisation of the use of encryption, anti-censorship and privacy tools, by refusing to limit the use of encryption within the EU, and by challenging third country governments which criminalise such tools;
Amendment 91 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Underlines that the digital collection and dissemination of evidence of human rights violations can contribute to the global fight against impunity; considers that such material should be admissible under international (criminal) law as evidence in court proceedings in line with international, regional and constitutional safeguards;
Amendment 96 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. DeploreCondemns the fact that EU-made information and communication technologies and services are used in third countries to violate human rights through censorship, mass surveillance, jamming, interception, monitoring, and the tracing and tracking of citizens and their activities on (mobile) telephone networks and the internet; condemns the fact that some EU- based companies wilfully provide the technologies and services leading to these violations;
Amendment 99 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Considerdemns mass surveillance to be, which is always disproportionate at all times, hence innd as such constitutes a violation of the principles of necessity and proportionality, and, therefore, a violation of human rights;
Amendment 113 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 a (new)
Paragraph 12 a (new)
12a. Reminds corporate actors of their responsibility to respect human rights throughout their global operations regardless of where its users are located and independently of whether the host state meets its own human rights obligations; calls on ICT companies, notably EU-based ones, to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, including through establishing due diligence policies and risk management safeguards and providing effective remedies when their activities have caused or contributed to an adverse human rights impact;
Amendment 117 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13 a (new)
Paragraph 13 a (new)
13a. Welcomes the December 2013 Wassenaar Arrangement decision on export controls in the areas of surveillance, law enforcement and intelligence gathering tools and network surveillance systems; recalls the still very incomplete nature of the EU dual-use regime, namely the EU dual-use regulation, when it comes to the effective and systematic export control of harmful ICT technologies to non-democratic countries;
Amendment 119 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Urges the Commission, in this respect, e context of the forthcoming policy review, swiftly to put forward a proposal for smart and effective policies to regulate the commercial export of dual-use technologies, addressing potentially harmful exports of ICT products and services to third countries, as agreed in the Joint Statement of the European Parliament, Council and Commission of April 2014; in this context, underlines the importance of introducing an ex-ante control mechanism instead of the current ex-post control mechanism; calls on the Commission to include effective safeguards to prevent any harm of these export controls to research, including scientific and IT security research without criminal intent; (Justification: The export of the actual dual-use software is hard to effectively regulate and has significant side-effects on legitimate security research and therefore on the security of global computing. It should therefore be treated with the utmost caution.)
Amendment 120 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14 a (new)
Paragraph 14 a (new)
14a. Calls on the Commission to include in its proposals measures that will allow exports of regulated technologies to democratic dissidents and human rights defenders in countries that violate human rights in order to help them protect themselves from surveillance and cyber attacks from their governments;
Amendment 124 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Calls on the Commission to submit proposals to review how EU standards on ICTs could be used to prevent the potentially harmful impacts of the export of such technologies or other services to third countries where concepts such as ‘lawful interceptiith a poor record on’ have different implications, or whereuman rights and the rule of law does not exist;
Amendment 128 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Calls for the development of policies to regulate the sales of zero-day exploitresponsible selling and subsequent disclosure of zero-day exploits and vulnerabilities to avoid their being used for cyber-attacks or for unauthorised access to devices leading to human rights violations;
Amendment 134 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Deplores the active involvementco-operation of certain European companies, and ofs well as international companies operating in the EU, in countriewith regimes whose actions violatinge human rights;
Amendment 139 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Urges the Commission publicly to exclude companies engaging in such activities from EU procurement procedures, from research and development funding and from any other financial support and to encourage Member States to prosecute such companies;
Amendment 158 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. Calls on the Commission to involve civil society, and independent experts, including security researchers, in the ICT field, to ensure up-to-date expertise that should result in future-proof policy making;
Amendment 161 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Underlines the need to avoid unintended consequences such as restrictions on research, on the exchange of and access to informationCalls on the Commission to include in its proposals measures to monitor, prevent and remove any unintended consequences such as restrictions or chilling effects on scientific and other types of bona fide research, on the exchange of and access to information and the development of security knowledge with no criminal intent or on the export of technologies that are in the interest of advancing human rights;