Reactive sanctions and foreseeable technology-enabled human rights harm: assessing Canada’s Special Economic Measures Act through the Geedge Networks case

Abstract

This research examines the extent to which Canada’s Special Economic Measures Act (SEMA) can engage with foreseeable, technology-enabled human rights harm. As surveillance and censorship technologies become increasingly embedded within digital infrastructure, human rights risks may arise through technological capacity, institutional context, and patterns of foreseeable misuse before specific violations are fully documented or formally attributed. This creates a challenge for sanctions law, which has traditionally been structured around identifiable actors, established wrongdoing, and serious violations that have already become legally and politically visible.

Using doctrinal legal analysis, policy analysis, and the case study of Geedge Networks’ reported involvement in Myanmar’s digital surveillance and censorship infrastructure, this research evaluates whether SEMA can respond meaningfully to infrastructure-mediated human rights risk. It argues that SEMA remains predominantly reactive in both statutory design and practical operation. Its legal thresholds, including “grave breach” and “gross and systematic” human rights violations, generally require a serious factual record before sanctions can be imposed. As a result, SEMA is not well suited to acting as an ex ante technology-governance or export-control mechanism.

At the same time, this research argues that SEMA should not be dismissed as irrelevant to prevention. Where a sufficient evidentiary record exists and a defensible nexus can be established between an actor and a serious human rights situation, SEMA may play a limited preventive role by increasing legal, economic, and reputational costs and by helping to prevent the further consolidation of harmful technological infrastructure. The Geedge case illustrates the importance of analyzing technology-enabled harm through capacity, context, nexus, and foreseeability, rather than through completed violations alone.

The research concludes that SEMA cannot replace broader preventive mechanisms such as export controls, corporate human rights due diligence, procurement safeguards, and transparency requirements. However, it can form part of a wider preventive human rights architecture. More broadly, the paper suggests that technology-enabled human rights harm is placing increasing pressure on the boundary between retrospective accountability and preventive legal intervention.