Amnesty: Google and Facebook Unprecedent Threat to Privacy

The go-to-answers to any form of criticism of the tech business have always been “freedom of speech”, “human rights” and “it would turn us into and China”. But as of today, Big Tech must come with a new answer. Amnesty International has called the bluff.

The report Surveillance Giants was published today. It calls Google’s and Facebook’s offers “a system predicated on human rights abuse” and says it is:

an assault on the right to privacy on an unprecedented scale, and then a series of knock-on effects that pose a serious risk to a range of other rights, from freedom of expression and opinion, to freedom of thought and the right to non-discrimination

Read that again. “Unprecedented”. As in “never before”. That means that it trumps the historical atrocities of the KGB, Stasi, North Korea… even the Sesame Social Credit in China.

Yes, Google and Facebook protested (and Amnesty has graciously included the responses in the report) and said they help freedom of speech. Except Amnesty International is a better judge of that.

Next time Chinese dissidents complain about surveillance, the Communist Party can say “at least it’s not as bad as Facebook”.