Surveillance Capitalism

NGO Briefing Catalogs Arguments from Climate Litigation

June 26, 2019

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has published an overview of legal arguments plaintiffs have used in lawsuits claiming companies have violated their obligations to limit contributions to global warming.
NGO Pushes Switzerland on Due Diligence in Agricultural Trade

June 26, 2019

Investigative nongovernmental organization Public Eye has called on the Swiss government to play a larger role, through regulation of and the imposition of human rights due diligence mandates on traders of agricultural products in Switzerland, to address human rights issues in global agricultural supply chains.
UK Pledges Action for "Sustainable" Fashion

June 26, 2019

The UK Government has issued a response to a House of Commons Committee’s report on clothing consumption and sustainability pledging to use “regulatory and economic instruments” to address the environmental impacts of the fashion industry and to make producers responsible for the costs of disposal.
UN Agent Calls for Rights-Focused Regime for Spyware

June 24, 2019

Reuters reports that UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye has called for a global moratorium on the sale and use of surveillance software “until a human rights-compliant safeguards regime is in place” to prevent the use of such software to spy on journalists and government critics.
Canadian Court Will Hear Case on Guatemala Mining Subsidiary

June 19, 2019

The Narwhal reports that a case in a British Columbia court against a Canadian mining company over its subsidiary’s alleged human rights violations in Guatemala is one example of plaintiffs currently testing the limits of Canadian courts’ jurisdiction over corporate subsidiaries’ conduct in foreign countries.
EU Regulation Imposes Transparency Mandate on Tech Companies

June 19, 2019

The EU institutions have passed a regulation requiring tech companies to provide “transparent terms and conditions” to business customers on online platforms and to offer “effective possibilities of redress,” including an internal mechanism for handling complaints, when these terms are violated.
Facebook Sparks Criticism by Disabling Search Function

June 18, 2019

Sam Dubberley, a special advisor to Amnesty International’s Crisis Response team, highlights the pressures on the tech industry to support the global human rights agenda in an op-ed calling on Facebook to reverse its “betrayal” of the human rights community by ending a function that allowed NGOs to find evidence of rights violations.
UN Adds Tennis Associations to Climate Action Framework

June 12, 2019

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has announced that organizers of the four global Grand Slam tennis tournaments have joined the Sports for Climate Action Framework, an initiative aimed at reducing the climate impacts of the sports industry and promoting the UN’s climate change agenda at sporting events.
NGO Ranks Supermarkets on Plastics Action

June 12, 2019

The activist organization Greenpeace has published a ranking of 20 of the largest US grocery retailers on their actions to eliminate “single-use plastics” from their stores, finding that supermarkets are failing to act “with the urgency needed to address the pollution crisis they’re causing.”
NGO Publishes Finance Sector Guidance for Climate Action

June 12, 2019

The Centre for International Governance Innovation has published a report identifying a set of scenarios related to global warming that companies in the financial sector can use to develop strategies regarding how they will confront risks climate change poses to their investment portfolios.