Digital Rights

Dozens of environmental and digital rights activists, researchers, and policymakers from Southeast Europe and beyond flocked around a unique event held in springtime Belgrade to dissect ties between technology and environmental issues, and to sort out negative impacts that mass production, data extraction, and surveillance capitalism inflict on the Planet. The event was organized by the Belgrade-based SHARE Foundation under the daily guidance of the Green Web fellow and the Cardiff Uni posdoc researcher Fieke Jansen, and the new media professor and algorithmic infrastructures explorer Vladan Joler.

On the EU’s periphery, Serbia has deployed enough biometric surveillance technology from China’s Huawei for law enforcement and “Safe City” solutions to cover practically all of Belgrade’s public spaces. Public pressure has raised the bar for turning on the technology, but the alarming project illustrates the need for transparent regulation of such systems everywhere, to ensure the protection of fundamental human rights.