Policy Recommendations

The fight for democracy in the digital age faces new threats as authoritarians cut their populations off from the global network and as AI technology advances. Democratic governments and the private sector should advance the defense of human rights in the digital age by undermining authoritarian internet restrictions and safeguarding privacy online.

Undermine Authoritarian Internet Restrictions

Access to the internet is under threat as authoritarian powers continue to create barriers for people to freely express themselves online. Internet shutdowns, throttling, and platform blocking remain among the most common tools of digital repression. At the same time, digital technologies serve as a lifeline for people seeking to expose human rights violations to the outside world and hold dictators accountable.

Combat internet shutdowns. Internet shutdowns are a favored tool of digital repression, deployed by governments during elections, protests, and periods of unrest to suppress dissent and cut off access to the outside world, often with devastating and long-lasting economic and humanitarian consequences.

• Internet service providers should publicly disclose the shutdown orders they receive and commit to challenging orders they consider disproportionate or unlawful.
• Independent watchdogs should sustain real-time shutdown documentation and rapid-alert initiatives, such as via the #KeepItOn coalition, which tracks and verifies shutdowns worldwide and provides evidence that civil society, journalists, and international bodies rely on to hold governments accountable. To this end, it is imperative that donors continue to support these ongoing efforts.

Support access to satellite internet technologies. These technologies provide a means to circumvent government restrictions on internet access. Supporting access to these technologies takes many forms, including technical investment and diplomatic pressure.

• Governments should conduct feasibility studies to assess the effectiveness and potential vulnerabilities of nascent Direct-to-Cellular (D2C) satellite internet technologies. They should also evaluate how to safely disseminate the technology and mitigate its exorbitant cost, which may pose barriers to access for human rights defenders on the ground.
• Governments should advocate for access to emergency satellite internet connectivity at the ITU World Radiocommunication Conference in 2027.
• The satellite industry should work closely with civil society to advocate for policies that de-risk satellite internet services, helping ensure that satellite internet providers can continue operating in repressive contexts.

Fund context-specific anticensorship tools. Since the means of censorship vary across different authoritarian regimes, it is necessary to invest in tools that respond to the unique environments in which human rights defenders and journalists are seeking to access the internet.

• The US government should ensure robust funding for the Open Technology Fund, which supports the development of anticensorship tools tailored to human rights defenders and journalists around the world.
• Providers of anticensorship tools should co-develop circumvention tool kits with local civil society organizations as governments introduce new blocking techniques.

Protect against VPN compromise. Virtual private networks (VPNs) provide essential privacy and security services to people around the world and make it possible for those in repressive contexts to safely access the open internet.

• Governments should avoid imposing age restrictions on VPN use, despite legitimate concerns about protecting children. Such policies risk being emulated by authoritarian states with weak rule-of-law institutions, potentially enabling even more severe violations of fundamental rights in repressive contexts.
• Governments should resist mandates that would require VPN providers to log user activity and VPN providers should resist these demands from governments. Similarly, such requirements would likely be replicated by authoritarian regimes to unmask human rights defenders and journalists.

Safeguard Privacy Online

Protecting privacy online is essential to safeguarding free expression in repressive contexts. Without strong privacy protections, journalists and human rights defenders may self-censor out of a fear of reprisal. Rapid advances in AI—and the growing threat of automated vulnerability exploitation—heighten these risks, leaving civil society organizations increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated cyberattacks.

Build accountability mechanisms and normative frameworks to disincentivize the misuse of surveillance tools. Commercial surveillance technologies are increasingly used by authoritarian governments to surveil human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissidents. Without meaningful consequences, surveillance vendors and their government clients face few disincentives to curb these abuses.

• Governments should use visa restrictions, financial sanctions, and entity listings to hold surveillance firms accountable when human rights are violated through the misuse of a surveillance tool.
• Export control officers should improve end-use monitoring of surveillance technologies and intermediary country oversight to address technology transfer loopholes.
• Democratic governments should support international norms that seek to combat the misuse of AI to surveil human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissidents.

Assess age-assurance measures for their privacy and security impacts. Online child safety requires urgent attention. However, age-assurance or “age-gating” measures pose privacy and security risks and may introduce barriers to free expression and access to information, particularly those aimed at social media platforms. Policymakers should carefully assess the rights impacts of age-gating and pursue a whole-of-society approach to child safety.

• Funders should invest in technical research to develop age-assurance methods that are truly privacy preserving and mitigate cybersecurity threats.
• Governments should require platforms that allow children to create accounts to make them private by default, and to alter algorithmic recommendation systems to limit children’s exposure to harmful content.
• Platforms that permit children to create accounts should provide strong privacy and security safeguards and engage civil society in developing child-protection measures that respect children’s rights.
• Policymakers should strengthen child-specific protections in privacy laws and dedicate additional resources toward addressing online child abuse.

Improve digital security safeguards. Journalists and human rights defenders are frequent targets of sophisticated digital attacks, yet many lack access to the tools and expertise needed to detect and respond to these threats. Strengthening digital security safeguards, from device-level threat notifications to emergency response support, can help close this gap.

• The private sector should ensure that users receive a device notification when their phone is compromised. Apple’s threat notifications are a best practice that should be emulated by other companies and providers.
• Donors should continue to support digital security training and rapid-response help lines for journalists and human rights defenders operating in high-risk environments.