A/HRC/41/41 democratic society. Their purpose is the opposite: to intimidate civil society actors, destroy their credibility and legitimacy and deny them the attention necessary for mobilization in the digital space. These attacks undermine the ability of civil society organizations and activists to share or receive information and communicate with others. They create incentives for self-censorship, while threatening individuals’ personal security and integrity. 45. For example, trolls are instructed to disseminate propaganda, isolate or drown out critical views, and inhibit anti-government movements, while amplifying the messages of government officials and boosting follower numbers. 62 In Oman, for example, authorities “systematically hack into online accounts and hijack them and flood social media such as Twitter with an endless stream of hashtag references, thus disrupting discussion on specific topics”.63 46. The use of commercial spyware, such as FinFisher monitoring technology and the Pegasus spyware suite, to launch cyberattacks against civil society actors is another example of this trend. Well-documented reports have linked the Pegasus spyware suite to spyware attacks against activists and human rights defenders in Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others. 64 These attacks allow hacking into, and watching in real time, their communications, location and activities,65 and can affect targets both within a State or extraterritorially. 66 47. Infiltrating social media groups or forums and tracking the online activities of civil society by “friending” activists is another technique used. Open source intelligence can also allow for the pre-emptive disruption of peaceful protests by arresting organizers who are communicating and planning their activities online. 48. Women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons are at particular risk of facing these attacks. For example, the Government of Egypt reportedly identified and arrested lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex activists by infiltrating and surveilling their activities on social media platform Grindr. 67 Authorities in Brazil used Tinder to form relationships and then conduct surveillance on women activists engaged in protests. 68 In Thailand, women human rights defenders were subjected to extensive discrediting, harassment campaigns and death threats in blogs and on social media.69 These attacks take particular forms, which include the dissemination of doctored pictures, usually of a sexualized and gendered nature; the spreading of information designed to discredit, often full of harmful and negative gender stereotypes; violent hate messages and threatening messages on social networks, including calls for gang rape and for murder; and breaches of privacy, including hacking into family members’ computers and phones and exposing the phone number, the home address and personal and family photos. The mandate holder echoes the findings of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, that online abuse against women is a direct attack on women’s visibility and full participation in public life, and should be duly investigated and punished.70 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 12 Institute for the Future, “State-sponsored trolling: how governments are deploying disinformation as part of broader digital harassment campaigns” (2018). A/HRC/29/25/Add.1, para. 34. See, for example, the Citizen Lab, “Hide and seek: tracking NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to operations in 45 countries”. See LBN 2/2018. Brief of amici curiae submitted in John Doe a.k.a. Kidane v. Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Article 19, “Apps, arrests and abuse in Egypt, Lebanon and Iran”, February 2018. Privacy International, “State of privacy Brazil”. See, for example, THA 6/2017. See A/HRC/38/47.