US to Launch Global Export Control Effort Over Surveillance Tools, Report Says
The Biden administration plans to work closer with trading partners to tighten export controls around surveillance tools and other technologies used by authoritarian governments for human rights abuses, according to a Dec. 2 report in The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. hopes to work with a number of countries to establish a “code of conduct” on export licensing policies for surveillance goods, administration officials said this week, and will encourage information sharing on sensitive technologies that are used against political dissidents, human rights activists and journalists.
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The U.S. plans to announce the initiative during the virtual Summit for Democracy Dec. 9-10, according to the report. China and Russia were not invited to the summit, which will include more than 100 democratic countries.
“This is a group of like-minded governments who will commit to working together to determine how export controls could better monitor and, as appropriate, restrict the proliferation of such technologies given their increasing misuse by end users in human rights abuses,” a senior administration official said, according to the report. Although officials didn’t say which countries would be part of the control effort, they may include members of the multilateral Wassenaar Arrangement, the report said.