Image from cover of “Pushed into the Shadows” report.
PBI-Canada is attentive to the upcoming session on June 23, 2026, at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on the erosion of the rights to assembly and association due to digital surveillance.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Gina Romero, has issued a new report on the threat to these rights posed by digital surveillance.
The 78-page report co-authored by Romero can be found at “Pushed into the Shadows”: Evidencing digital surveillance chilling effects and the erosion of the rights to freedom of assembly and of association.
Online monitoring and drones
The “Pushed into the Shadows” report states: “Authorities employ a blend of covert, hidden and online monitoring (including data scraping) strategies with more overt visible forms (such as surveillance drones).”
“Open-source intelligence monitoring”
In April 2026, The Tyee reported that a freedom of information request found that “CRU-BC Intel” is “actively monitoring opposition” to the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission line, as well as “anticipated protest activity” that an RCMP spokesperson says “has come to our attention through open source intelligence monitoring” that, according to the RCMP in an internal document, includes “online activity”.
Journalist Amanda Follett Hosgood explains in her article: “The Critical Incident Secretariat [has] a biweekly meeting that brings together several provincial ministries, resource sector regulators and a controversial RCMP protest-policing unit called the Critical Response Unit — British Columbia, also known as CRU-BC.”
Surveillance by drones
The Guardian has also reported: “Documents show that ahead of the [January 7, 2019] raid, the RCMP deployed an array of surveillance, including heavily armed police patrols, a jet boat, helicopter, drone technology, heat-sensing cameras and close monitoring of key land defenders’ movements and social media postings.”
More on this at: RCMP use helicopters, airplanes and drones to surveil and arrest Wet’suwet’en land defenders (PBI-Canada article, May 21, 2023).
Surveillance of political activism
The “Pushed into the Shadows” report also notes: “Civic and political activism is increasingly used as opportunities for surveillance.”
The Ottawa-based Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) has previously urged, in the context of National Energy Board hearings on the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project, that the RCMP “exercise restraint in its surveillance and intelligence-gathering activities concerning events where there is little if any indication that violence or other criminal acts are likely to occur.”
The CRCC also recommended that “the RCMP develop appropriate policies and/or guidance to govern its collection and retention of information, and that the RCMP not retain personal information where it its established that there is no criminal nexus and the events for which it has been collected have concluded.”
Predictive, algorithmic surveillance
The “Pushed into the Shadows” report comments: “The discriminatory potential of AI surveillance tools, including facial recognition and predictive algorithms, are well documented.”
In September 2020, the Ottawa-based International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) noted its concern that the RCMP had contracted firms, including US-based Babel Street, “that uses algorithms to track, analyze and translate online communications … to engage in widespread online surveillance and so-called ‘proactive’ identification of threats.”
At that time, Cynthia Khoo, a Citizen Lab research fellow and human rights lawyer who recently co-authored a report ‘To Surveil and Protect’ on algorithmic policing, told The Tyee: “Given the track record of Canadian law enforcement using social media surveillance to target civil rights movements and Indigenous and racial justice activists, the RCMP should not be further expanding these kinds of capabilities without wide public consultation and an independent inquiry into this technology’s impact on human rights and historically marginalized groups, such as Black and Indigenous communities.”
The psychological stress of surveillance
The “Pushed into the Shadows” report also highlights: “Surveillance-induced chilling effects assert profound impacts on the individual. These manifest in several, critical, ways, affecting the intimate spheres of life. Beyond economic, cultural and social consequences, they impact people’s ability to function in society and access vital services. The belief of being under surveillance cripples interpersonal trust and social relation ships. Participants highlighted the deep psychological stress arising from mistrust, isolation and fractured social relations affecting ‘every aspect of an activist’s life’.”
This echoes with the “Criminalization, Intimidation and Harassment of Wet’suwet’en Land Defenders” report produced by Amnesty International that documents surveillance by the RCMP of land defenders on their territories in Canada.
This Amnesty International report notes: “Wet’suwet’en land defenders interviewed by Amnesty International shared that the intimidation, harassment, unlawful surveillance and criminalization that they have experienced has negatively impacted their land defence activities. While they used to feel happy and at home on their territory, it is now in some ways associated with feelings of anxiety and stress.”
Bill C-2
In September 2025, Greenpeace Canada expressed their concern that the Canadian government’s Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act, would “endow the federal government with extraordinary new surveillance powers” and that “the history of RCMP surveillance and repression of land defenders (particularly but not exclusively Indigenous) suggest that these powers will be misused.”
In November 2025, CBC News reported: “Last month, the Liberals made the move to split the bill in hopes of getting some of the border protection-specific measures through Parliament and into law more quickly, with a promise to return to the more contentious issues down the road.”
In their critique of the new Bill C-12, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) notes the findings of a UN committee in their decennial human rights check-up on Canada a concern about “an assault on the right to peaceful protest, including through expanded surveillance of dissenting voices…”
The call for a national inquiry
In March 2026, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC) called for a national inquiry into the surveillance of Indigenous peoples both historically and with concern about proposed megaprojects.
We continue to follow this issue and will be monitoring the debate on freedom of assembly and digital surveillance at the UN on June 23, 2026.
