Digital technologies, human rights and global trade? Expanding export controls of surveillance technologies in Europe, China and India

Abstract

Historically global trade has not had a strong value-based focus. Despite these challenges, concepts related to human rights have slowly been seeping into international trade. This chapter will provide an overview of the increasing role of human rights and digital technology in export control regimes over the past two decades and how this has led to the expansion of export controls of surveillance technologies. It will take a particularly close look at the EU debate on export controls, human rights and digital technologies, before looking at China and India. We argue that export controls become a powerful way of inserting human rights into international trade. In contrast to claims that Internet regulation is fundamentally impossible, export controls provide a key example of how human rights norms can be embedded in technical Internet infrastructure by restricting the flow of surveillance technologies which are likely to have a negative human rights impact.