The Tech Companies That Wield Even More Power Than Facebook or Google
Reading Time: 6 minutesHow authoritarian governments manipulate telecommunications companies to violate human rights.
Recently, Human Rights Watch released a scathing report detailing the exploitation of personal data by the Hungarian government under Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party. As a Hungarian digital rights researcher, I was not surprised by the findings. But I was pleased to see them finally made public. While the Orbán government’s overreach into the media and judiciary has been well documented, its disregard of privacy rights in pursuit of new voters has been largely overlooked. The report found that the Fidesz party had accessed data collected to administer public services, from COVID vaccines to tax benefits, and used it to generate campaign messages, creating an unequal playing field for the opposition and undermining democracy.
This troubling environment for privacy and digital rights in my home country explains why I was so alarmed in August when the U.K.-headquartered telecom company Vodafone announced it had agreed to nonbinding terms for the sale of Vodafone Hungary. The buyer is the Hungarian state, in partnership with a local technology firm called 4iG, which has close ties to Orbán’s party and already holds significant influence over the telecom market. Through my work with Ranking Digital Rights, I’ve seen how state-owned telecom companies under authoritarian-leaning regimes can contribute to human rights violations. (Disclosure: Ranking Digital Rights is part of New America; New America is a partner with MediaDownloader and Arizona State University in Future Tense.) And I fear that the sale will allow the Hungarian government to wield too much control over the country’s telecom infrastructure and could lead to increased surveillance and censorship of Hungarian citizens. For years, Hungary’s prime minister has emphasized his desire to increase the proportion of every sector of the economy under ‘national ownership.’ Orbán’s logic is that the more critical infrastructure he controls, the more secure he is in power. Not only will the deal help consolidate Orbán’s influence over the sector, but it’s also a worrying sign of growing authoritarianism.
Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read’s comments immediately following the sale showed a clear lack of concern for its human rights implications, emphasizing the potential for growth and investment under state ownership instead. Though it would appear to be a purely business decision for Vodafone, I do not think the same can be said of the Hungarian government’s decision to acquire the company. In 2021, an investigation by nonprofit journalism center Direkt36 revealed that the Hungarian government was one of the many state actors to be using Pegasus software to surveil journalists and politicians through their phones. Members of the Hungarian secret services have an essentially limitless ability to acquire data in the country. There are no real legal restrictions on or independent body overseeing surveillance. All of this raises the question of how the right to privacy of former Vodafone users will be ensured once the sale is complete and the Hungarian government is in control.
The Vodafone Hungary sale is a stark example of the extent of the global telecom industry’s real but underreported power, which authoritarian leaders can wield for themselves. Telcos are responsible for providing the essential communication infrastructure and services that enable citizens to exercise their basic human rights online. To operate in a given jurisdiction and provide their services, however, telcos must rely on government licenses. This gives governments a leverage over the operator, as well as its employees and assets, that they don’t customarily have over other types of information and communications technology companies, like social media platforms. With such leverage, governments can order companies to take actions like shutting down a network or installing surveillance equipment. If the operator does not comply, it risks any number of forms of retaliation, including the revocation of its license, the seizure of assets, or even the prosecution of employees.
For these reasons, it is important that telecom companies do more to assess the human rights context in which they plan to operate before entering new markets, to ensure that they do not contribute to human rights abuses in those markets, as outlined by the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. In Ranking Digital Rights’ 2022 Telcos Giants Scorecard, which ranks 12 of the most powerful global telecom companies, we also outline the need for greater transparency on government demands for shutdowns, to access user information, and to censor content. Telcos should do more to push back on such overbroad demands whenever possible.
Sometimes, these companies choose to exit a difficult market rather than comply under pressure. This makes sense: They don’t want to be party to human rights violations. But this comes with its own set of human rights risks, particularly for users and employees left behind, and requires a plan for responsible disengagement.
While digital platforms face mounting pressure to develop their human rights policies and guidelines, telcos have remained unaccountable by comparison. This is especially true in democracies of the Global North, where governments are less likely to abuse the services of telcos and many citizens are, therefore, often less acutely aware of these companies’ powers. But with telcos often wielding even greater power over digital rights, like freedom of expression, globally, it is essential that they be held to the same standards as Big Tech companies and that potential harms to human rights be meaningfully addressed. This requires stronger public and media scrutiny. Unfortunately, in the Ranking Digital Rights Scorecard, we found that most telcos are not taking the steps necessary to minimize the potential abuse of their services and protect human rights. Despite the widespread use of telecommunications technology, little is known about how telecom companies handle requests from government and private entities to block access to specific IP addresses and URLs, suspend accounts, or impose other restrictions. Unsurprisingly, the local subsidiaries of telcos we rank often fail to uphold the same human rights standards as in their home markets.
Perhaps the most striking recent illustration of the dilemmas telcos face when operating in countries that demonstrate little regard for human rights comes from Telenor, which decided to exit Myanmar after the return to power of the military junta following a 2021 coup. Before and after the coup, the company reported being asked to install surveillance equipment on its networks to spy on citizens and to shut down their networks frequently. Yet its decision to sell its local subsidiary to Lebanese company M1 was met with considerable criticism. Local activists warned that selling to M1, known for its operations in countries with violent and extremist regimes and its ties to the Myanmar junta, could endanger the safety of the company’s former 18.2 million mobile subscribers, particularly political opponents of the junta. This is especially troubling given the current situation in Myanmar, where the military continues to be engaged in a violent crackdown on peaceful anti-coup protesters. Telenor’s exit was, therefore, in many ways also a major blow to Myanmar’s human rights, demonstrating the importance of responsible disengagement for telcos operating under difficult circumstances.
Despite widespread and well-deserved coverage of Facebook’s nefarious role in provoking ethnic violence in Myanmar, the entanglements of these two other tech giants in the country’s political calamities received little coverage. But this case clearly illustrates that telcos must also do better. This is why robust human rights impact assessments are so vital: to identify how government regulations and policies affect human rights and to mitigate any risks created by such policies in the jurisdictions in which they operate. Unfortunately, of the 12 companies Ranking Digital Rights assessed, only Spanish telco Telefónica provided sufficient information to demonstrate that its assessments cover all area of risk measured by our standards.
Now, it seems that telcos may be repeating the same mistakes in Ethiopia. The war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which began in November 2020, has been devastating. Despite a formal cease-fire agreement between the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan forces in November, when the first international aid groups arrived in the country, the situation in the region remains fragile, tensions are still high, and the humanitarian crisis is ongoing. Yet, in a move reminiscent of Myanmar’s civilian government in the early 2010s, the Ethiopian government has been courting new international telcos, offering them an exciting business opportunity within an extremely difficult human rights context.
In May 2021, a global consortium of telecoms known as the Global Partnership for Ethiopia—composed of Safaricom Plc, Vodacom Group, Vodafone Group, Sumitomo Corporation, and CDC Group—announced that it had been granted a license to run telecom services in Ethiopia. In October, Safaricom Ethiopia switched on its network, becoming the first in the country to launch a mobile service that will compete with the state-owned Ethio Telecom.
‘As a member of the UN Global Compact, Vodafone takes the human rights situation extremely seriously when making a decision to invest in a country,’ Vodafone stated of its entry into the Ethiopian market. It added, ‘Our experience around the world indicates that improving access to telecom services helps people to exercise their rights and freedoms, such as the right to free expression.’ However, the company failed to mention the very real risk of being asked to violate enforced network shutdowns, which are still ongoing in Tigray. The consortium also claimed to have conducted an independent human rights assessment that would ‘inform [its] approach in Ethiopia.’ And yet the results of the assessment remain unclear. According to the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, providing the public with sufficient information to assess whether a company is addressing its human rights impacts is a key responsibility. Vodafone’s failure to release an unredacted and comprehensive version of the assessment it claims to have conducted, or at least parts of it, is inconsistent with these principles. Without more information about the consortium’s approach to the Ethiopian market it is unclear what lessons, if any, they have learned from Myanmar, highlighting, once again, the need for greater accountability of the sector.
However, keeping telcos accountable is difficult when most global telecom companies are, as Ranking Digital Rights has documented, even less transparent than their Big Tech counterparts. At the same time, they are more powerful than an Instagram or Twitter. If you turn off one platform, users can move to another. Telcos, on the other hand, provide the gateway to the information, communication, and resources that can provide (or deny) citizens a voice. They also have the potential to play a positive and vital role in protecting and preserving human rights, particularly under abusive regimes, in a way Big Tech cannot. A renewed focus on the role of telcos from all those of us truly concerned with the state of global digital rights has the potential to impact the lives of billions of people, and it’s long overdue.
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/telcos-human-rights-violations-myanmar-ethiopia.html
Ref: slate