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| Research and Reports |
| Global Report on the Authoritarian use of Technology This report compiled by Privacy International documents the use of authoritarian technology in both democratic and authoritarian states. They have termed “authoritarian use of technology” not only to mean the use of technology by authoritarian regimes, but also to highlight how digital technology is increasingly being used in authoritarian fashion to stifle democratic participation and to undermine fundamental freedoms and human rights. The report looks at five specific technology groups–Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT), Facial Recognition Technology (FRT), Mobile Phone Extraction (MPE), Mass communications inception, and Spyware–alongside specific case studies that evidence how the technology is being used in specific countries against human rights defenders and journalists. Read more here. Inside Morocco’s surveillance machine In this detailed report on Morocco’s surveillance state, Amnesty International provides a comprehensive picture of the country’s surveillance ecosystem and how the country uses both foreign and domestically produced surveillance technology to silence human rights defenders. Beyond the use of the Pegasus spyware supplied by the Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group, Amnesty details other repressive tactics through which the Moroccan government seeks to suppress dissent, including a combination of unlawful surveillance, smear campaigns, judicial harassment, and criminal prosecution. This comprehensive report also sheds light on the public-private partnerships that facilitate these covert surveillance projects. Read more here. Digital Solidarity Economy in Latin America Centering bottom-up experimentation of alternative digital futures, this book proposes digital solidarity economy as a theoretical and political framework that offers critical language to understand how workers and communities seek to govern technologies from below. Composed of diverse and novel case studies, this book challenges the Eurocentric traditions of academic research by presenting historically grounded and locally situated research that attempts to reimagine both digital presents and futures from the lived realities of Latin American people. Edited by Rafael Grohmann, María Belén Albornoz, and Alessio Bertolini, the edited volume features work that looks into the foundations, histories and various dimensions of the digital solidarity economy, as well as workers’ experiences. Read more here. Control, Shift, Govern: Technologies of state power in the digital age Ayona Datta and Marian Reyes Carranza’s new edited volume brings together scholars from the field of geography, urban studies, anthropology and other related fields to discuss the shifting nature of state control and digital governance. Focusing on three critical pulses that categorize digital transformation of the state–control, shift, and govern–the book grapples with the rising relevance of the private sector and their technological offerings in relation to the role of the state, which they argue is not necessarily in decline. The contributions are both geographically and conceptually diverse, including empirical studies from Kenya, Taiwan, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, and South Africa. Read more here. Seismic Shifts on the Global Internet Freedom House reports that global internet freedom has declined for the 16th consecutive year. With Iran imposing the longest nationwide internet shutdown on record in 2026, countries across the political and ideological spectrum are increasingly engaging in efforts to bar people’s access to information while also stumping freedom of expression. Their report covers 38 countries, 16 of which observed a year-over-year deterioration. Other countries included in the report that experienced a decline in their freedom on the net index included: Jordan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Gambia. Read more here. Fear and Looting in the Periphery: Approaching Social Harm This special issue is composed of 8 articles that approach and theorize social harm from what they refer to as the liminal and in-between spaces of the periphery. With particular focus on the Anatolian and Iberian peninsulas, these articles collectively unpack the social, economic, and political structures that facilitate social harm. Highlighting Southern European voices is intentional to the goal of this special issue: it is an attempt to highlight different voices that bring about diverging ways of knowledge that are often overlooked in mainstream academic discourse. Read more here. Surveillance at Scale: How AI training platforms gather personal data from European workers The Digital Platform Labor (DiPLab) research group investigates the scale at which workplace surveillance impacts gig workers. Their report specifically zooms in on the data work platform Outlier, where workers are recruited to label, check, and organize training data for artificial intelligence. Their findings showcase how freelance gig workers face precarious working conditions beyond financial exploitation, as their personal data are being extracted by these platforms and repurposed for covert AI training and potential military applications. Read more here. How European Surveillance Technology Facilitates Repression in Egypt and MENA Ramy Raoof Halim demonstrates the structural loopholes that facilitate the sale of European technology to authoritarian regimes that utilize the technology for repressive means such as for surveillance, censorship, and communication monitoring and interception. Halim identifies this regulatory void working in both directions: not only is there insufficient safeguards against state abuse in the importing MENA regimes, but there is currently also a lack of meaningful human rights due diligence in the exporting countries in Europe. This has allowed European technology firms to serve MENA governments who have become the most influential clients in the global surveillance market. Read more here. Digital Democracy from Below: Resisting AI and Technosolutionism Edited by Jess Reia, Jonathan van Geuns, and Nicole West Bassoff, this edited volume is comprised of 34 short essays that not only problematize the continued expansion of AI infrastructure and the ideology of technosolutionism that accelerate this growth, but it also imagines beyond pure critique: it outlines how citizens are fighting these developments on the ground and practicing democracy from below. As they detail in their introduction, “‘from below’ describes a location and a direction of pressure” and does not describe or prescribe a particular politics. They encourage readers to sit with the tension that comes with practicing democracy from below, which their contributions illustrate, can come in diverse and varying fashion. Read more here. Internet Shutdowns, Press Freedom and the Global Information Crisis The Center for News, Technology & Innovation (CNTI) has published a briefing that discusses Iran as a prominent example of decline in both internet and press freedoms. Iran serves as both a distinctive case marked by its own intricate challenges as a country and a microcosm of the global threats to press and internet freedom. Read more here. Surveillance of peaceful assemblies in the OSCE region Published by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), this report details the harmful implications of surveillance on peaceful assembly and specific strategies for independent monitoring. It highlights both the strategies that have been developed by civil society organizations to respond to new surveillance tactics, while also identifying critical obstacles to these counter-surveillance measures, such as the growing invisibility of modern surveillance, legislative ambiguity, and the use of physical intimidation and violence by law enforcement. The report has a particular focus on the OSCE region, which stands for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and includes 57 signatory countries spanning Europe, Central Asia, and North America. Read more here. |
| News |
| What Non-Western Governments said about AI at the UN As AI governance is increasingly being shaped by European, American, and Chinese interests, Ramsha Jahangir and Justin Hendrix from the Tech Policy Press provide a run down of how non-Western governments talked about AI at the UN General Assembly High-level Week 2026. While the West has been contemplating regulation and the deceleration of frontier AI development, not all countries around the world are aligned with the visions of the West. Some countries like Pakistan and DR Congo, for instance, called for a more balanced outlook where developments in AI do not further exacerbate the digital and intelligence divide. Read more here. AI tool used in thousands of asylum claims failing basic accuracy tests Reporting from The Independent documents how the AI interview transcription tool introduced into the UK government’s asylum process back in April 2026 is leading to inaccurate representations of asylum seekers’ claims. While stakeholders purport that the tool is not intended to replace human decision making, the tool has led to an increase in appeals, up from 50 percent from the previous year. Although it is ultimately up to the caseworker to decide whether they want to utilize the AI tool running on OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, some elected officials and local constituents have raised concerns over using unstable AI tools for what is considered “life and death” decision making. Read more here. Conflict in the Red Sea is forcing cloud giants to find a new route for the internet With rising conflict around the Bad Al-Mandab strait (between Yemen, Eritrea, and Djibouti) in the Red Sea, Indranil Ghosh reports major cloud companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft are looking for alternative routes around the Red Sea, some considering land routes through Iraq. The political unrest in the region is expected to cause major disruptions in Internet connectivity if maintenance and repair of subsea cables, which are estimated to carry more than 90% of data capacity between Europe and Asia, cannot be carried out. Read more here. Vietnam’s Gig Workers Finding New Ways to Push Back This contribution by Lam Le brings to light the boycotts initiated by gig workers in Vietnam that are underreported in major local news outlets. While more spontaneous than previous boycotts, the recent call to action was initiated by an anonymous Grab driver in early September 2026, calling drivers in Vietnam to ‘turn off the [Grab] app’. In response, the Competition Commission intervened by requesting Grab and its competitors to provide documentation around their pricing scheme, although experts in the field note that the fact that the labor authority was not called in suggests that “drivers are still seen as users of platform services, rather than its employees.” Read more here. Meta’s Moderation Failures Loom Over Brazil’s Runoff Presidential Election Running up to Brazil’s general elections, there was growing concern over the disruptive influence of private platforms over electoral behavior. Tatiana Dias discusses the mounting evidence alleging censorship, account bans, reach suppression, and algorithmic discrimination that was disproportionately affecting incumbent president Luiz Inácio da Silva and his outspoken supporters. Platform governance continues to play a significant role in Brazil as the majority of the country rely on platforms operated by private companies like Meta as a primary source of information. Read more here. |
| Commentaries |
| Subsea cables and oil pipelines: The infrastructure linking AI, empire, and occupation This contribution by Alli Armijo illustrates the uncanny similarities between current subsea infrastructure projects led dominantly by US Big Tech and the exploitative colonial enterprise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and oil extraction routes. Armijo demonstrates how internet infrastructure is deeply rooted in oil infrastructure: AI infrastructure not only relies on natural gas for fuel, it is also increasingly being embroiled in geopolitics as it is considered a crucial component of a state’s military strategy. Read more here. India’s SIR Voter Purge Shows Digital Authoritarianism in Action While India is commonly referred to as the ‘world’s largest democracy’, its electoral process, which increasingly operates on a centralized digital database, requires scrutiny. Apar Gupta discusses how voter exclusion, often framed as a technical error despite affecting a few hundred million Indian citizens, has been and continues to be a tool of authoritarian governance. It has recently been determined that the omission of 130 million names from the voter roll would not have swayed the ruling BJP party’s win. Nevertheless, the ramifications to democracy remain dire, especially when these system failures disproportionately affect marginalized groups. Read more here. Nonstate Actors and Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance In a commentary published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Justin Sherman discusses how non-state actors are exploiting the vulnerabilities of ubiquitous technical surveillance as the barrier to entry continues to drop. Sherman highlights how counterintelligence, often imagined to be part of the sophisticated arsenal of nation-states and governments, is increasingly taken up by criminal organizations such as cartels and large crime families. Sherman calls for a systematic and comprehensive rethinking of data and technology regulation that centers privacy, as the threat is not merely about the breadth of actors that can exploit these vulnerabilities, but rather the ubiquitous nature of commercial data that requires protection. Read more here. |
| Art and Interventions |
| Manifesto for a Just Cloud and Artificial Intelligence The global activist collective Red Nube Justa (RNJ) published a manifesto where they call for a moratorium or suspension of new data center permits, expansions, and construction until public oversight, particularly by affected communities, can take place. Bringing together a wide group of signatories–communities, organizations, territorial defenders, academics, journalists, and activists–the aim is to demand transparent assessment of new expansion projects and meaningful community participation where affected communities are not just relegated to the role of observer. Read more here. Digital Fortresses: Mapping the infrastructure of coercion and control The Transnational Institute’s recently published report sketches the global scope of the physical, political, and economic architecture that undergird expansive and coercive digital systems. Drawing from insight from a diverse group of activists, researchers, and organisers, the report is an attempt to map the political architectures of these digital infrastructures–from data centers, databases, and cables to mobile and home devices–and to point out the vulnerabilities of these systems that can serve as points of intervention. The report ends with practical notes for practitioners by proposing resistance strategies that start from collective organising that merge traditionally distinct and siloed movements. As the authors of the report, Nick Buxton and Josephine Solanki, write: “These movements will need to be international in the same way as the digital coercive system is global.” Read more here. Call for abstracts | Assembling critical AI studies: Concepts, Methods, Interventions There is a call for abstracts for those interested in expanding the field of Critical AI Studies with a particular focus on critical conceptual and methodological contributions to the interrogation of AI as an object of study. The deadline for submission is November 30th, 2026 and the edited volume will be published with Meson Press. The editorial team includes Anna Schjøtt, Dieuwertje Luitse, Louis Ravn, Nanna Thylstrup, Rocco Bellanova, and Tobias Blanke. Read more here. Launch Event | What does building just AI for African languages look like? Co-organized by Whose Knowledge? and The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), the virtual launch event will discuss findings from their research on Community-Centered Sovereign Language Technologies. The event will explore how East and West African communities are building language technologies grounded in collective stewardship, local values, and lived experiences. The event will take place on November 12th, 2026 from 15:30 UTC. Sign up here. |
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| Surveillance in The MajorityWorld Research Network aims to expand the scope of surveillance studies to include non-Northern/Western discourses and practices. It is a place for exchange, collaboration, and activism against the undemocratic use of surveillance technologies. |