Digital Rights & Emerging Technologies

Digital Rights and Emerging Technologies

The rapid expansion of digital technologies and artificial intelligence is creating a new frontier of human rights risk that traditional HRDD frameworks were not designed to address. When the UN Guiding Principles were developed in 2011, smartphones had just become mainstream, social media was in its early years, and machine learning was an academic discipline rather than a commercial product deployed at mass scale. The UNGP framework remains fully applicable - the obligation to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for adverse human rights impacts does not change depending on the technology involved. But the specific risks, the mechanisms of harm, and the appropriate due diligence responses differ profoundly in the digital context.

The B-Tech Project: Applying UNGPs to Technology Companies

Recognising the need for sector-specific guidance, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) launched the B-Tech Project in 2019. The project aims to produce authoritative guidance on what "respect for human rights" means in practice for technology companies, grounded in the UNGP framework. Its foundational papers cover the technology sector's specific role types - as product manufacturers, platform operators, and data intermediaries - and identify the heightened responsibilities that arise from the scale and speed at which technology companies can affect human rights.

The B-Tech Project identifies four key areas of concern specific to technology companies:

• Content governance and freedom of expression.
• Data privacy and the right to a private life.
• Non-discrimination in algorithmic decision-making.
• The use of technology by governments for surveillance and repression.

AI and Algorithmic Bias

Artificial intelligence systems trained on historical data often reproduce and amplify existing patterns of discrimination. This is not a theoretical risk but a documented phenomenon across multiple domains:

• Hiring and recruitment: Amazon's internally developed AI recruitment tool, which was decommissioned in 2018 after internal review, was found to systematically downgrade applications from women because it had been trained on historical hiring data reflecting male-dominated hiring patterns.
• Credit scoring and financial services: Studies have found that algorithmic credit scoring systems in the US have systematically disadvantaged Black and Latino applicants, replicating historical patterns of redlining through the proxy variables used in predictive models.
• Criminal justice: Predictive policing tools and recidivism risk assessment algorithms have been found to assign higher risk scores to Black defendants in the US at rates disproportionate to their actual recidivism outcomes, raising serious concerns about their use in sentencing and bail decisions.
• Healthcare: Algorithms used to allocate healthcare resources in the US were found to systematically underestimate the health needs of Black patients because they used healthcare expenditure as a proxy for health needs, reflecting historically unequal access to care.

From an HRDD perspective, companies deploying AI systems are responsible for identifying these risks before deployment, assessing their potential scale and severity, and implementing mitigation measures - including algorithmic auditing, diverse training data requirements, and meaningful human oversight of high-stakes decisions.

Surveillance in the Workplace

Employee monitoring technologies have expanded dramatically with the rise of remote work. Software that tracks keystrokes, screenshots, webcam images, and productivity metrics raises significant concerns around the right to privacy (ICCPR Article 17), freedom of thought and expression, and psychological health. The ILO's supervisory bodies have noted that intrusive monitoring can undermine workers' dignity and create environments of stress and distrust that adversely affect mental health.

The key human rights questions companies must address when deploying monitoring technologies are:

• Is the monitoring proportionate to a legitimate business objective, or is it intrusive beyond what is necessary?
• Have workers been informed of what is monitored, why, how the data is used, and who has access to it?
• Have worker representatives been consulted on monitoring policies, consistent with freedom of association principles?
• Are there safeguards preventing monitoring data from being used for discriminatory purposes?

Data Privacy and the Right to Private Life

The right to privacy is enshrined in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In the digital age, this right is exercised primarily through control over personal data. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and analogous laws in Brazil (LGPD), India (DPDP Act 2023), and other jurisdictions translate privacy rights into specific legal obligations around data collection, processing, storage, and deletion.

For companies operating internationally, data privacy due diligence requires:

• Mapping the personal data the company collects, the legal basis for processing it in each jurisdiction, and the risks of unauthorised access or disclosure.
• Assessing whether data sharing arrangements with government authorities or third parties create risks to individuals, particularly in jurisdictions where data may be used for surveillance or repression.
• Evaluating the human rights implications of data localisation requirements in authoritarian states, where compliance with local law may require placing data within reach of security services.

Gig Economy and Platform Work

Digital platform companies have created new forms of work that sit outside traditional employment frameworks. Ride-hailing drivers, food delivery couriers, freelance task workers, and content moderators often classified as "independent contractors" may lack basic labour protections: minimum wage guarantees, social security coverage, sick leave, and the right to organise and bargain collectively. The ILO's 2021 report on non-standard forms of employment highlighted that platform work is associated with income volatility, lack of social protection, and algorithmic management that can feel more punitive and opaque than traditional supervision.

Content moderators deserve particular attention. Workers employed (often through third-party contractors) to review graphic and violent content on social media platforms face severe psychological harm from repeated exposure to images of violence, child exploitation, and self-harm. Several major technology companies have faced legal claims from content moderators in the Philippines, Kenya, and Ghana regarding inadequate psychological support and failure to provide safe working conditions.