Increasing government use of commercial spyware and other types of surveillance technology poses a significant threat to human rights worldwide. Police and intelligence services in many countries use such technology to target activists, journalists, humanitarians, academics, and other critical voices, undermining democratic institutions, shrinking civic space, violating victims’ privacy and other rights and, in many cases, threatening their physical security.

The European Union (EU), whose member states are home to many of the companies that develop and export such technologies worldwide, is part of the problem. Despite a regulatory framework designed in part to prevent abuses, the EU currently is doing too little to prevent sales and transfers from its member states to governments with a track record of using such technologies for crackdowns on dissent and other serious rights violations. Particularly for human rights defenders, journalists, and others whose work focuses on exposing abuse, corruption, and other crimes in both the public and private sectors, surveillance technology has been used to compromise their ability to work freely, safely and to protect their sources.

EU-produced surveillance technology is in use in dozens of countries worldwide as well as by countries in Europe, and the EU hosts many of the surveillance companies working worldwide: the majority of EU member states have at least one surveillance technology company operating inside their borders. In a 2024 report by Google’s Threat Analysis Group on the commercial surveillance industry, all but of the two companies mentioned are based in the EU.