Under the Electric Eye: An Analysis and Assessment of Risk Factors For Abuse of State Surveillance

Abstract

Surveillance technology has been widely proliferated in many different regime types all over the world. Under the guise of promoting national security and public safety, without effective safeguards surveillance technology can be used as a tool of intense repression and can limit the privacy and human rights of individuals to a staggering degree. As high-tech surveillance systems become increasingly intertwined with our online lives, and more personal data is shared over the internet and accessible remotely than ever before, this becomes an increasingly more pertinent topic for research. There are many potential risk factors that may be the reason why there is a stark disparity in how different states, subject to different external conditions, choose to implement these systems in the way they do, and their effects on the populations in these countries. This thesis explores the question of which risk factors for abuse of surveillance systems are the most likely to lead to violations of privacy rights among various regime types. This study uses a mixed methods approach to carry out a comparative analysis, examining different theories for the cause of violations via surveillance systems. The study performs a quantitative analysis using data from Freedom House’s World Freedom Report and TheGlobalEconomy Datasets to see what factors are most strongly correlated with infringements on privacy rights as measured by the Varieties of Democracy (VDEM) Dataset. The study performs this analysis of four different countries with different forms of governance, social expectations surrounding surveillance, ethnic diversity makeups, security conditions and levels of political stability. These countries are Russia, China, Israel, and India, each offering a diverse set of conditions through their political and legal landscapes. After the quantitative analysis, each case study has a qualitative portion that dives deeper into the scope of surveillance, the legal frameworks, and an analysis of risks associated with each one. Among the different risk factors, this study examines - access to technology, the presence of crisis situations, the strength of political rights, and the prevalence of group grievances - the greatest consistent risk was found to be the strength of political rights in the legal frameworks surrounding surveillance. In countries subject to different external risk factors, a non-encompassing legal framework that leaves individuals in a population excluded from the legal protections of citizens appeared to be the biggest risk. These risks result in chilling effects to individual rights such as freedom of speech and expression, as well as infringements upon expectations of privacy from the state. This study reveals that states, regardless of regime type, violate privacy rights in the absence of strong external oversight mechanisms that enforce the political rights in the state. Nations that export surveillance technology and cooperate internationally should provide incentives or attempt to coerce adherence to guidelines for legal frameworks to establish protections for citizens and other vulnerable populations by limiting access to this tech as much as possible from non-cooperative nations.