Amnesty: Argentina’s AI Surveillance is Social Control
- Jurist News
- 38 minutes ago
- 3 min read
August 21, 2026
Amnesty International on Wednesday accused Argentina of building techno-authoritarian surveillance infrastructure without adequate legal safeguards, as the government’s newly created AI security unit expands state monitoring powers over citizens’ online communications and physical movements.
In its latest report, the rights group stated that Argentina‘s Ministry of Security spent at least USD$1.2 million on surveillance technology between 2024 and 2025, which included social media monitoring tools, facial recognition software, and thermal-camera drones with automatic tracking and ability to transmit images in real time.
Amnesty expressed concern for the surveillance of protesters, journalists, activists, human rights defenders, migrants, young people, and marginalized groups. They warn that this can create a “chilling effect,” in which people who believe they are being monitored may avoid speaking, protesting or organizing, even without being directly arrested or punished. This raises concerns about the impact of surveillance on the right to freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom of association.
In October 2025, Argentina bought a Clearview AI facial recognition license for USD$33,500. Clearview’s database contains more than 70 billion facial images scraped from the internet, and data protection authorities in France, Italy, Greece, and the Netherlands have already fined the company over its data practices. The Ministry, however, maintains that the Federal Police use facial recognition only in connection with active judicial investigations, and no evidence has surfaced that Clearview was used specifically to identify protesters.
Argentina’s expansion of AI-driven surveillance has largely occurred through executive and ministerial measures. On July 26, 2024, then-Security Minister Patricia Bullrich signed Resolution 710/2024, creating the Artificial Intelligence Unit Applied to Security (UIAAS) inside the Ministry of Security’s Directorate of Cybercrime and Cyber Affairs.
The resolution authorizes the unit to patrol open social media, applications, websites, and the dark web, and permits real-time facial recognition through CCTV footage, machine-learning analysis of historical crime data to predict future crimes, and large-scale data aggregation to build suspect profiles. It states that these powers must operate within the Constitution and existing law, but it does not specify data retention limits, access restrictions, or independent oversight mechanisms. A related May 2024 rule let the Federal Police monitor social media and other public digital sources without judicial authorization.
Argentina has already struck down a predecessor system on similar grounds. The Legislature’s required oversight commission was never established, and the Ombudsman’s Office never filed the reports the law required. A separate 2024 challenge led courts to suspend a related Buenos Aires facial recognition system pending an independent audit and privacy impact assessment.
More recently, on December 31, 2025, the government issued DNU 941/2025, amending Argentina’s National Intelligence Law by decree instead of through Congress. The Association for Civil Rights argues the decree is unconstitutional because it bypasses the constitutional requirement that decrees of necessity and urgency apply only when Congress cannot convene or a genuine emergency exists. The organization specifically objects to a provision letting intelligence personnel detain individuals before notifying police, calling it an unlawful transfer of policing power to intelligence agencies.
Amnesty uses the term “techno-authoritarianism” to describe the harnessing of technology to enable government control. The concern is that governments can use AI-powered tools to make monitoring and identifying people easier and more widespread. Amnesty is calling on Argentina to ban remote biometric recognition for mass surveillance and adopt more concrete rules governing the purchase, development, sale, import, export and use of surveillance technologies.
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