Intelligence agencies’ surveillance programs are increasingly reliant on...
Intelligence agencies’ surveillance programs are increasingly reliant on companies, lack proper transparency and are perhaps illegal under international law, said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay in a report released Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1yqH5yH). “The very existence of a mass…
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surveillance programme ... creates an interference with privacy,” the report said. “The onus would be on the State to demonstrate that such interference is neither arbitrary nor unlawful.” Practices in many nations show “a lack of adequate national legislation and/or enforcement, weak procedural safeguards, and ineffective oversight, all of which have contributed to a lack of accountability for arbitrary or unlawful interference in the right to privacy,” the report said. “There is a clear and pressing need for vigilance in ensuring the compliance of any surveillance policy or practice with international human rights law, including the right to privacy.” The report said countries should immediately review their own national laws for compliance with international human rights law. It also called for a multistakeholder process to codify more international norms for surveillance. Privacy advocates applauded the report. Human Rights Watch Senior Internet and Human Rights Researcher Cynthia Wong called it “a critical step to put the right to privacy on firm legal foundation for the digital age.” The U.K. should heed the report in light of its efforts this week (CD July 16 p20) to push through legislation requiring telecom companies to retain customer data for 12 months, Wong said.