Insights

According to Human Rights Watch, private aerial surveillance services provided to the EU border agency Frontex enabled the Libyan Coast Guard to locate migrant boats.

These interceptions often led to migrants being forcibly returned to Libya, where they face serious human rights violations, including arbitrary detention and abuse.

Frontex states that such surveillance serves an important humanitarian search-and-rescue purpose, rather than facilitating forced returns. And yet one of the companies involved in operating surveillance drones for Frontex is Airbus DS Airborne Solutions (ADAS), which also provides the German Armed Forces with “data-management services”.

As governments increasingly rely on private security actors for security-related research, development, and assistance, the lines between civilian and military technological domains blur.

Worse still, when that technology is then used in ways that contribute to human rights violations, outsourcing public security functions to private companies makes it harder to define who is responsible and should be held accountable. Strengthening oversight of military, law enforcement, and private security actors in the following three ways would considerably slow down the unchecked militarization of civilian spaces and the erosion of accountability.

Firstly, businesses are constantly introducing new services that should be subject to the same oversight and scrutiny as private security actors. According to international standards such as the Montreux Document and the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers, what matters is not whether a company is labeled a “technology”, “data” or “security” company, but the nature of the service it provides. Companies whose activities contribute to security functions should, regardless of how they are labeled, be subject to appropriate security-related oversight.

Secondly, governments that rely on private security and surveillance companies should support independent oversight of these providers. Some agencies view external scrutiny as a burden that creates unnecessary delays and limits their ability to maintain control over sensitive operations. To encourage their compliance, it is important to articulate the risks to national security and the reputation of relying on unaccountable businesses. Without robust oversight, for example, data gathered and stored by private surveillance companies may be accessed by hostile entities. Governments and policymakers cannot overlook the need to oversee private surveillance actors to safeguard citizens, civilian spaces, and human rights.

Thirdly, as demand for private security services grows, the sector is expanding across various domains. Effective oversight, therefore, requires diverse expertise across those new fields. By pooling resources and working within agreed rules and principles, oversight actors can more effectively match this complexity. Without such cooperation, institutional capacity to ensure accountability will be progressively undermined, with consequences felt across society.

This article was originally published in issue 193 of "À Propos".

Image: A space satellite hovering above the coastline. SpaceX/Unsplash