"Iron net: Digital repression in the Middle East and North Africa" 29 Jun 2022

• Governments across the world have powerful digital tools to control and repress their populations, ranging from spyware and social media manipulation to facial recognition technology and mass surveillance.
• Activists are working to protect themselves from such tools, but this is not a fair fight.
• Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the leading exponents of digital authoritarianism in the Middle East.
• The two states have intensified their collaboration with China and Israel to gain greater access to advanced technologies.
• The EU has responded to concerns about the risks of new technologies with a raft of regulations on digital markets and services, artificial intelligence, and technology exports.
• The fact that European governments have been targeted, and implicated, in NSO Group’s Pegasus scandal should sound the alarm about the global threat of digital authoritarianism.
• The EU should treat the threat as an urgent security and political concern.