Global Report on the Authoritarian use of Technology
Worldwide, states’ are deploying authoritarian tech to stifle dissent, assert control and diminish human rights.
Key findings
- In both democratic and authoritarian contexts, technologies are being deployed in ways that erode, and in some cases effectively dismantle, human rights.
- Technology use risks facilitating or amplifying repressive practices and systems, and becoming an instrument of authoritarian governance.
- Surveillance technologies are being expanded and entrenched with the purpose of exerting control over entire populations and/or specific groups of people such as journalists and human rights defenders.
- The authoritarian use of technology is ultimately having a ‘chilling effect’.
- Some technologies are disproportionately intrusive by design and should not be used.
- Technologies’ use is often incompatible with the rule of law, lack redress and raise mass impunity risks.
- A lack of transparency facilitates the authoritarian use of technologies.
Report
Post date
12th October 2026
We have been observing and monitoring an increase in states’ adoption of authoritarian practices and policies. These practices are facilitated by new and emerging technologies or embodied in their very deployment to stifle dissent, assert control and diminish human rights. These digital technologies are being deployed — both online and offline — by authoritarian and democratic regimes alike. We have coined the term ‘authoritarian use of technology’ to describe this global phenomenon.
We believe that the authoritarian use of technology goes beyond the unlawful use or abuse of technologies by states that we have been monitoring and exposing for years. Technology’s authoritarian use results in a systematic undermining of democratic principles, erosion of the rule of law, exertion of significant social and political control, or normalisation of the surveillance of individuals and their communities - particularly those already at risk.
These technologies are being expanded and entrenched with the purpose of exerting control over entire populations and groups of people at risk, such as human rights defenders (HRDs), journalists, lawyers, activists, dissidents and those from minority ethnic, national and religious backgrounds. This is being done to target, persecute or ostracise them. This ultimately creates a ‘chilling effect’, spreading a fear of reprisal, which serves not only to infringe upon the rights of certain individuals, but of whole communities and populations. In turn, this has a corrosive effect on democratic institutions, mechanisms of accountability, oversight and redress, and the fabric of open societies.
We compiled this report to evidence the types of technologies involved, they ways in which they are being deployed, and their examples of use.
The report is devised into chapters that focus on a specific technology. The technologies include:
- Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT);
- Facial Recognition Technology (FRT);
- Mobile Phone Extraction (MPE);
- Mass communications inception (such as bulk interception and IMSI catchers) and;
- Spyware.
Each chapter includes case studies, evidence of how a technology is being deployed in a specific country, or how the technology is being used to target a specific group of people such as human rights defenders or journalists.
Overall, the report conveys not only isolated examples, but a wider emerging trend of the authoritarian use of technology.