Section 2: An Introduction to Digital
Transnational Repression
Key Features of Digital Transnational Repression
Digital technologies are integrated into existing patterns of transnational repression,
enhancing the mechanisms available to authoritarian states to undertake extraterritorial repressive activities.32 Countries as wide-ranging as Bahrain,33 Myanmar,34 China,35
See our animated video explaination of digital transnational repression.
32
See Marcus Michaelsen (2020), “The Digital Transnational Repression Toolkit, and Its Silencing
Effects,” Freedom House <https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2020/digital-transnationalrepression-toolkit-and-its-silencing-effects> [Michaelsen, “Toolkit”]. See also Moss, “Ties That Bind”
at 269.
33
Ben Knight, “UK Malware Used Against Bahraini Activists,” DW (9 May 2012) <https://www.dw.com/
en/uk-malware-used-against-bahraini-activists/a-16219440>.
34
Geff Green and Eleanor Grace Lockley (2014), “Surveillance Without Borders: The Case of Karen
Refugees in Sheffield,” in Emerging Trends in ICT Security, Ed. Babak Akhgar and Hamid R. Arabnia
(2014: Elsevier) <https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-411474-6.00032-3> [Green and Lockley, “Karen
Refugees”].
35
See e.g. Al Jazeera (2018), “China: Spies, Lies and Blackmail: How China Controls Its Citizens Inside and
Outside the Country Where No Criticism or Dissent is Allowed,” Al Jazeera (5 April 2018) <https://www.
aljazeera.com/program/101-east/2018/4/5/china-spies-lies-and-blackmail> [Al Jazeera, “China Spies”];
Yaqiu Wang (2019), “Why Some Chinese Immigrants Living in Canada Live in Silent Fear,” The Globe
and Mail (25 February 2019) <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-why-some-chineseimmigrants-living-in-canada-live-in-silent-fear/>; Paul Mozur and Nicole Perlroth (2020), “China’s Software
Stalked Uighurs Earlier and More Widely, Researchers Learn,” The New York Times (1 July 2020) <https://
www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/technology/china-uighurs-hackers-malware-hackers-smartphones.
html>; David Gilbert (2020), “Chinese Police Are Making Threatening Video Calls to Dissidents Abroad,”
Vice News (14 July 2020) <https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxdv7/chinese-police-are-video-callingcitizens-abroad-with-threats-not-to-criticize-beijing> [Gilbert, “Chinese Police”]; Bradley Jardine,
Edward Lemon, and Natalie Hall (2021), “No Space Left to Run: China’s Transnational Repression of
Uyghurs,” Uyghur Human Rights Project <https://uhrp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/TransnationalRepression_FINAL_2021-06-24-2.pdf>.