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Privacy experts are calling for citizens to be protected from growing surveillance in Africa, following a new report by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the African Digital Rights Network (ADRN).

Their report, "Mapping the supply of surveillance technologies to Africa" focuses on Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Malawi and Zambia importing surveillance tech from countries including the U.S., Britain, China, Israel as well as the EU amounting to more than $1bn every year.

Digital rights researchers say citizens are already working to protect their identity using VPNs, encrypted messaging and privacy browsers.

The researchers called for more robust laws to ensure that surveillance be used to benefit public security rather than monitor dissenting voices.

For example, South Africa's Department of Justice published new surveillance laws in September after an earlier act allowing for the interception of communication was challenged in court by journalists.

The new act includes provisions so journalists and lawyers are notified when they are being surveilled by the state.

"There's a need for data protection laws which spell out how people's data is kept (for legal interception of communication), who can access it and conditions of access," Jimmy Kainja, the author of Malawian research in the report, told Context.

The use of surveillance for harassment, detention and torture violates international human rights law and the tech companies' policies, he added.

"Overall, there's a need to balance state security/national interest and human rights."

Asia

Rina Chandran, Asia tech correspondent

A South Korean man has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for using AI to generate hundreds of sexually explicit images of children - the first such case in the country.

The proliferation of AI tools such as Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, that can produce images from text prompts, has outpaced regulation. The FBI warned in June that criminals were increasingly using AI to create sexually explicit images to intimidate and extort victims, and that children were also targeted.

Australia last month unveiled regulations requiring internet search engines to take "appropriate steps" to prevent the spread of child exploitation material, including any created by AI.

USA

Avi Asher-Schapiro, U.S. tech correspondent

A new investigation by Wired and the Markup examines the effectiveness of predictive policing tools in Plainfield, New Jersey, finding that the algorithms failed to accurately predict where and when crime was likely to occur.

The piece looked at more than 23,000 predictions generated by predictive policing platform Geolitica between February and December 2018, finding that fewer than 100 actually coincided with a real crime reported to the police.

Earlier this year, an investigation by Context found that the predictive policing tool had been combined with a surveillance camera system sold by Fusus, directing police to tap into cameras at certain locations where the Geolitica system predicted crimes were likely to occur.

Latin America

Diana Baptista, data journalist

A new effort by Mexican legislators to launch a biometric digital ID card has been met with widespread criticism by digital rights groups.

The legislation proposes a mandatory ID card for all Mexican citizens that includes full name, photography, and fingerprints, among other data.

The groups have warned that the digital ID system could be used to exclude people from public services, and can ramp up the surveillance of human rights defenders, journalists, and political opponents.

Europe

Zoe Tabary, tech editor

Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company plans to hire more staff in Britain - to work in artificial intelligence - bucking the trend of layoffs across the tech sector, the BBC reported.

Meta, Amazon and Google, among others, have cut tens of thousands of jobs since 2022. Last week Fortnite maker Epic Games announced it was cutting more than 800 jobs.