Exploring the Nexus between Technologies and Human Rights 22 from the region and do not provide enough resources to handle issues such as cyber harassment or account hacking. Most of the digital spaces online, especially popular social networks sites, are developed and maintained by private entities such as Facebook. The platform features are designed by these companies, which have a disproportionate amount of control over how people communicate and engage with each other on their platforms, from a technical point of view (such as the algorithm that determines the news feed) or a policy point of view (such as the use of real names). Users have little say in these decisions and are compelled to play within the rules of the game if they want to be part of the network. Besides considering state and non-state actors that dictate the rules of engagement in digital spaces, digital technologies themselves come with certain technological affordances which sometimes exacerbate wrongdoing. Doctoring images and spreading rumours, for instance, can be done with minimal cost and to great effect; something which could not be done in the pre-digital era. More sophisticated cyber attacks come in the form of hacking and taking over online presences, or seizing control of one’s digital resources, or intercepting communication with surveillance tools. In certain cases, access to justice is hampered by the lack of capacity of law enforcement when it comes to digital rights issues. A discussion in one of the focus groups in Malaysia illustrates the point that, in certain cases, violations of rights online are not taken as seriously as offline violations. In a specific case, a woman who received multiple death and rape threats online had reported the case to the Malaysian police, whose first recommendation for her was to log off the Internet, implying that the threats sent to her would not affect her security if she did not read them. Upon deciding to pursue her case, she was instructed to sift through thousands of hate comments and profiles to capture the most salient attacks that would then be investigated by the police. This is not an isolated incident as other cases of online violence have been handled similarly, suggesting the police’s reluctance or incapability to protect citizens’ safety online. Despite their shortcomings, digital spaces are still important spheres for exercising civil rights, especially in the situation of countries with closed civic spaces (Vietnam was given as an example) or marginalised, and persecuted communities (such as LGBTIQ communities in Malaysia). As digital spaces afford more freedom than physical spaces, these communities exercise their rights as much as they can within the digital spaces in order to expand the access to these rights within offline and analogue spaces. Data-Centred Rights “If you can make sure that the data that represents a person is protected in a way that it cannot be weaponised against him, you are essentially protecting the human rights of that person,” said one of the respondents. This has been worded in a different way in the literature: by “turning citizens into data doubles,” corporations and governments have been able to conduct “social sorting and alter access to resources and life chances,