Red Card on Digital Rights

A story of control, censorship, and state surveillance during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar

The World Cup Issue

For the 2022 FIFA World Cup, RDR has teamed up with Arab digital rights organization SMEX to launch the three-part series “Red Card on Digital Rights.” The series investigates the state of the internet and digital surveillance in host country Qatar and how the World Cup mega-event will help facilitate that surveillance now and into the future, amid a slew of criticism over the country’s human rights record.

Special Reports

Acknowledgments

Augusto Mathurin (RDR) is the author of the series. Afef Abrougui (SMEX) and Marianne Rahme (SMEX) are research contributors and editors. Abed Kataya (SMEX), Nourhane Kazak (SMEX), Sophia Crabbe-Field (RDR) and Jessica Dheere (RDR) supervised and edited the articles. Oscar Montiel (RDR) and Rasha Sayegh (SMEX) produced the graphic design. Illustrations were made using OpenAI DALL·E.

Acknowledgements for the report “Mandatory App, Opaque Policies” by SMEX can be found here.

Acknowledgements for the “Telco Giant Scorecard” by RDR can be found here.

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