Phenomenology of Violations of Fundamental Human Rights by the Actions of Authoritarian States in Cyberspace

Subject Areas : Legal Studies of Cyberspace

akbar shoja ¹ , Ali SabernejadAlavian ² , Hatam Soltani ³

1 - Department of Public Law, Islamic Azad University, Bukan, Iran
2 - Assistant Professor, Department of Law, Ghazali University, Qazvin, Iran
3 - Department of Public Law, Islamic Azad University, Bukan Branch, Bukan, Iran

Received: 2023-02-25 Accepted : 2023-06-13 Published : 2023-06-25

Keywords: Authoritarianism, cyber space, Human Rights, Social networks, Artificial Intelligence, Troll Army,

Abstract :

As an attractive, accessible and inclusive environment, the cyberspace has many capacities for the development and expansion of basic human rights and demands regarding them. But in reality and action, the mentioned space has become a tool to violate these rights, and the politicians of "authoritarian" States, with the help of the capacities of this space - especially social networks -, have violated the basic human rights including privacy, right to freedom of information and freedom of expression. The present article, employing the descriptive-analytical methods and with rational induction in the performance of some authoritarian States in the cyberspace, constitutes an attempt in finding cases of human rights violated by the "cyber authoritarianism" of the mentioned governments and the optimal understanding of the threats to the human rights using new technologies and artificial intelligence. The findings of the research indicate that cyber authoritarianism has fundamentally violated human rights by violating data privacy and security, denying free access to information, spreading false information and limiting the right to freedom of expression and that nowadays many states have been busy with establishing grounds in cyberspace for continuation of their authoritarianism by forming special malicious cyber groups such as "Keyboard Army" and using "Trolls" in the way of engineering public opinion and thought, hiding information and giving false information.