A/HRC/29/37 2. Importance of digital security 53. While they provide additional capabilities for those working on human rights issues, ICTs can present a number of additional risks, and to mitigate those risks, persons potentially at risk of violations, including human rights defenders, should take the requirements of digital security seriously. Digital security can include software to scan computers for spyware, resources such as Security in-a-Box, as well as digital security helplines or forums.19 54. Activists can communicate more securely using virtual private networks, encryption programmes or Tor, a browser designed to increase the anonymity of Internet users. Nonetheless, developers and trainers should caution users that full privacy and anonymity online is never guaranteed. The risk of digital insecurity should also be weighed by larger international human rights actors, both intergovernmental and non-governmental, with regard to their interactions with smaller organizations or individuals. 55. Evaluating the merits and demerits of secure digital encryption does not fall squarely within the mandate of the Special Rapporteur. However, it is certainly a complex issue, with the demands of human rights investigation pulling in both directions, that becomes an issue of concern to this mandate holder when digital insecurity leads directly to victimization, including the threats or actual commission of extrajudicial killings. The use of mainstream social media platforms to share human rights information can pose security risks both for “civilian witnesses” and their subjects. 3. Monitoring for protection 56. The proliferation of surveillance and recording afforded by ICTs not only greatly enhances the opportunities to hold individuals to account, as will be discussed below, but can also prevent the commission of violations. Awareness of surveillance can have a significant deterrent effect if coupled with credible accountability regimes, as demonstrated by the use of closed-circuit television surveillance to deter crime. Belief in this deterrent effect is so strong that some activists have been known to pretend to film events, even though their phone battery was dead, as a strategy against abduction or arrest.20 57. Perhaps the most directly applicable example of this, and one that addresses a core interest of the Special Rapporteur — the excessive use of force by law enforcement — is the use of body-worn cameras by police officers. A recent study of the use of such technology in California, United States, found that officers’ use of force dropped by 59 per cent on the introduction of the cameras, and complaints concerning excessive force dropped by nearly 90 per cent.21 Other trial projects, involving the use of smartphones as body-worn cameras that transmit video, audio and geolocation information, are being run in Brazil, Kenya and South Africa.22 19 20 21 22 10 Resources provided through such programmes as New Tactics in Human Rights (www.newtactics.org) provide spaces for online knowledge exchange on various aspects of human rights work, including digital security. Stephanie Hankey and Daniel Ó Clunaigh, “Rethinking risk and security of human rights defenders in the digital age”, Journal of Human Rights Practice, vol.5, No. 3 (November 2013), p. 543. Barak. Ariel, William A. Farrar and Alex Sutherland, “The effect of police body-worn cameras on use of force and citizens’ complaints against the police: a randomized controlled trial”, Journal of Quantitative Criminology (November 2014). Graham Denyer Willis and others, “Smarter policing: tracking the influence of new information technology in Rio de Janeiro”, Igarapé Institute Strategic Note 10 (November 2013); see also the Smart Policing initiative, http://en.igarape.org.br/smart-policing/.