(Washington) The United States wants to explore, with allied countries, the implementation of restrictions on the export of surveillance technologies, to prevent them from being used to violate human rights, said Thursday a senior official. of the White House.
Washington intends to launch an “Initiative on export controls and human rights” at the summit of democracies organized by President Joe Biden on December 9 and 10, in virtual format, the source said.
She did not give details of which states might join the initiative, indicating only that the United States wanted to “bring together a group of like-minded governments” in a “voluntary, informal” approach. ”
The senior official only indicated that “many” signatories to the Wassenaar Arrangement would participate. The Wassenaar Arrangement is an informal multilateral commitment for the control of exports of conventional arms and so-called “dual-use” goods and technologies used in their manufacture, now grouping together 42 states.
It is, according to the source, “to work together to determine whether export controls would make it possible to better monitor and, when appropriate, restrict the proliferation of such technologies, due to their ever-increasing diversion to violate the human rights, including in transnational repressive actions. ”
This working group must “develop and adopt a code of conduct […] written and non-binding on how to apply human rights protection criteria ”to exports.
The source pointed out that the United States has already put in place measures to prevent China from using American technologies for the suppression of Uyghurs, and made similar decisions regarding the Burmese regime.
She added that the United States, for example, also targeted Israeli companies NSO and Candiru.
Surveillance technologies bring together a wide variety of increasingly sophisticated tools whose use is spreading all over the world: surveillance cameras, biometric software, facial recognition, drones, mass conversation interception systems. telephone or connection data (IMSI-catcher), etc.