The Washington-based Think Tank the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)’s International Forum for Democratic Studies (IFDS) released its new report, The Global Struggle Over AI Surveillance: Emerging Trends and Democratic Responses.
From cameras that identify the faces of passersby to algorithms that keep tabs on public sentiment online, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools are opening new frontiers in state surveillance around the world. Law enforcement, national security, criminal justice, and border management organizations in every region are relying on these technologies—which use statistical pattern recognition, machine learning, and big data analytics—to monitor citizens.
In the lead essay, Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, assesses the global spread of AI surveillance tools and ongoing efforts at the local, national, and multilateral levels to set rules for their design, deployment, and use.
It gives particular attention to the dynamics in young or fragile democracies and hybrid regimes, where checks on surveillance powers may be weakened but civil society still has space to investigate and challenge surveillance deployments.
Two case studies provide more granular depictions of how civil society can influence this norm-shaping process: In the first, Eduardo Ferreyra of Argentina’s Asociación por los Derechos Civiles discusses strategies for overcoming common obstacles to research and debate on surveillance systems.
In the second, Danilo Krivokapić of Serbia’s SHARE Foundation describes how his organization drew national and global attention to the deployment of Huawei smart cameras in Belgrade. This report was edited by Beth Kerley, a program officer at the International Forum who focuses on emerging technology and democracy.
The release of this report marks the launch of the International Forum’s “Making Tech Transparent” series, which focuses on crafting transparent and participatory processes around the use of emerging technologies in politics and governance.
Building on a sequence of cross-sectoral, cross-regional workshops, this series looks at initiatives such as smart cities, biometric surveillance tools, and algorithmic decision-making systems in a global context. Contributors will address both the democracy implications of new technologies and vectors for civil society involvement in their design, deployment, and operation.
