Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay. Used under a Pixabay license.
By Gina Romero, UN Special Rapporteur for the rights to freedom of assembly and of association
When experts discuss how modern digital surveillance erodes civic space, human rights and freedoms, the conversations almost always drift into vague conclusions and confusing legal jargon. We spend our time arguing over privacy, technical details like encryption settings, or the abstract limits of government control power. But I am presenting a new report and Global Study to invite us all to look at an entirely different, deeply human ledger of harm: the profound crisis of mental health and psychological trauma that is currently sweeping through civil society and the global activist community.
For a long time, we have been told that government surveillance is like a sharp scalpel: a precise tool used against dangerous actors. The truth is that digital surveillance has been transformed into a massive, society-wide, permanent ecosystem of suspicion that affects, or can potentially affect, everyone. Unlike the old days when policing was limited and localized, today’s digital tracking is remote, largely invisible and never stops. In many countries it follows activists, civil society actors, journalists and human rights defenders into their homes using a long range of tools, including smartphone spyware. This allows outsiders to map their family connections and monitor their private communications, wrecking not only their public work, but also affecting deeply even their more intimate relationships.
The psychological toll of operating within this invisible trap is devastating. After analysing data across 84 countries and territories, I found out that the worst damage of digital repression isn’t just that it paralyzes organizations or makes people afraid to engage with others — the de-socialization effect — it also causes deep psychological trauma. Activists are struggling with clinical depression, emotional exhaustion, chronic burnout, and severe mental health challenges, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), directly caused by state-backed digital surveillance.
Living under constant surveillance is to exist in a permanent state of hypervigilance. Activists report checking their phones with intense anxiety, over-analyzing simple everyday technology glitches, and constantly looking over their shoulders on the street. This state of paranoia eventually colonizes the routine of civil society and activists until they don’t even notice their anxiousness, fracturing physical, emotional, and social life. This isn’t an accidental side effect of digital surveillance; it is a carefully designed mechanism of pre-emptive deterrence. When governments weaponize uncertainty, a person’s mind becomes its own prison.
Worse still is the deep social isolation surveillance creates. Trust, which is the vital fuel of collective action and solidarity, completely evaporates. When Pegasus or other spyware infects an activist or an organization, the victim becomes a social pariah and is treated like someone with a contagious disease. Colleagues stop texting them out of fear of collateral surveillance. Close relationships and intimate partnerships deteriorate. Activists face the heartbreaking choice of either continuing their public work or cutting ties with their aging parents and/or young children to shield them from retaliatory monitoring and doxxing.
This systematic breaking of ties leaves human rights defenders profoundly alone. The impact on vulnerable groups, like youth, is even deeper. The self-censorship forced upon Gen Z activists, for example, creates a mental fatigue that is ultimately more toxic and mentally draining than the online hatred or physical harassment they face in public. This emotional damage is so widespread that a new industry focused on therapy has emerged within the activism world, explicitly dedicated to helping victims of digital surveillance survive and overcome the psychological ghosts left behind when their private lives are stolen.
When severe medical conditions like PTSD become an everyday danger and standard occupational hazard, for activism, the global system and human rights framework have fundamentally broken down. If international bodies continue to evaluate surveillance through a narrow, strictly legal lens focused only on privacy, they chronically underestimate the compound harm of these systems.
Digital surveillance does much more than steal data. It inflicts deep human wounds; it stops people from safely developing and expressing their identities, breeds trauma that can last for generations, and fractures the human mind. Until we weigh real emotional costs like depression, burnout, and fear right alongside legal frameworks, we will continue to look away as the mental well-being of our bravest change-makers and rights defenders is quietly demolished in the digital darkness.
