Amnesty International report: activists in Belarus rely on encryption to evade surveillance

In a recently published report titled It’s enough for people to feel it exists: Civil society, secrecy and surveillance in Belarus, Amnesty International (AI) argues that activists in Belarus are subject to extensive government surveillance, facilitated by telecom companies. The report underlined that companies operating in Belarus are required by law to allow authorities to have remote-control access to their users’ phone and Internet communications. According to AI, human rights activists in the country rely on encryption as ‘a last line of defense’ against the surveillance measures, protecting their data with encrypted email services, chat apps, and hard drives.