The report documents how potentially limitless, round-the-clock, unchecked surveillance has a debilitating effect on NGO activists, because basic work, for example arranging a meeting over the phone, becomes a risk.
“In a country where holding a protest or criticizing the president can get you arrested, even the threat that the authorities are spying on you can make the work of activists next to impossible”, said Joshua Franco, Technology and Human Rights Researcher at Amnesty International.
All this takes place with the consent of telecommunications companies (including ones owned by Telekom Austria Group and Turkcell), which provide the government with almost unlimited access to their customers’ communications and data. Giving authorities remote-control access to all their users’ phone and internet communications is the requirement for operating in Belarus.
“Companies that operate in Belarus have to let authorities have the data they want, when they want it. So if the KGB, for example, wants to spy on them, they don’t need to show a warrant, they don’t need to ask the company to give them access”, said Joshua Franco.
“Telecoms companies have great responsibility. Technology usually empowers free speech, but the spread of communications technology in Belarus has increased the risk of repression. It is vital that telecoms companies resist the abuse of communications technology for outrageously intrusive violations of privacy and free expression”, – he continued. “The future of online freedom depends on whether telecoms companies challenge governments who overstep the bounds of privacy and free speech, or meekly comply with them to protect their profit margins”.
Stringent state surveillance has a negative effect on civic activism. The Belarusian KGB and other security services have free, non-stop, remote access to both real-time communication and stored data in the phone and internet networks.
The report is based on interviews (between August 2015 and May 2016) with more than 50 human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, political opposition members, technology experts and others, either in Belarus or in exile. They demonstrate how fear of surveillance impacts privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association.
As activists told the Amnesty International, the total secrecy around surveillance forces them to assume they are subject to surveillance all the time. One independent journalist, whose identity has not been disclosed, said: “Most people are afraid to speak openly on the phone. It’s like part of your mindset. You assume from the beginning that you live in fear, that everything is bad, that you cannot control or influence it. In principle if I am talking indoors, or on the phone, or writing emails, I assume it all gets to the KGB.”
The most simple tasks such as seeking funding for their organization, making phone calls, or arranging meetings, become fraught with risk, because, as activists say, they fear their personal or financial information could be used to prosecute, discredit or blackmail them.
Belarusian authorities have unfettered access to communications
According to the Belarusian law, telecom companies are obliged to make their networks compatible with the Hardware System for Search Operations (HSSO). Because of that authorities do not need to make requests or inform the operator anymore for receiving access to communications. The companies must also keep the data about customers’ devices and internet services, for five, or possibly as long as ten, years so that authorities have the opportunity to access it remotely.
Everything happens with almost no oversight and there is no public record of how often this system is used or for what purpose. The legal justifications for surveillance are extremely broad. In particular, surveillance can be carried out when there is a threat to national security. Belarusian law describes 30 types of threats to national security, including “decline in well-being and quality of life”, “rise in unemployment”, “inadequate and poor quality of foreign investment” as well as “attempts to destroy national spiritual and moral traditions and biased revisions of history.” To initiate surveillance the authorities do not need the court authorization.
Amnesty International is calling on the Belarusian government to create a system of checks and balances in surveillance sphere to bring it in line with the international human rights standards.
The organisation is also calling on the telecommunications companies who own or part-own operators in Belarus to challenge laws that prevent them from protecting privacy and to inform their customers in Belarus that their data can be available to the authorities at any time.
Amnesty International believes that the companies are violating well-established standards on business and human rights. According to the UN’s Guiding Principles for Business, national laws where a company operates cannot be used to justify human rights abuses.
“Intrusive surveillance is not a new phenomenon in Belarus. but what has changed is that technology is taking it to a whole new level. The authorities now have a vast surveillance apparatus at their disposal that allows unrestrained access to private life. The KGB can use phone location records to see where people are and who is with them. People’s mobile phones are now like police officers in their pockets,” summed up Joshua Franco.
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