{"id":47417,"date":"2013-06-07T14:20:24","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T13:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=47417"},"modified":"2017-05-09T09:56:55","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T08:56:55","slug":"government-surveillance-apple-google-verizon-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=47417","title":{"rendered":"UN report slams government surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a rocky week for government surveillance and freedom of expression,\u00a0Brian Pellot<\/strong>\u00a0writes<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the UN\u2019s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression Frank La Rue\u00a0delivered<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0report<\/a> to the Human Rights Council outlining how state and corporate surveillance undermine freedom of expression and privacy. The report traces how state monitoring has kept pace with new technological developments and describes how states are \u201clowering the threshold and increasing the justifications\u201d for surveillance, both domestically and beyond their own borders.<\/p>\n

The true depths of this lowered threshold were exposed on Thursday, when The Guardian\u00a0revealed<\/a><\/span>\u00a0that the US National Security Agency has been collecting call records of Verizon\u2019s millions of subscribers. Things got worse on Friday when reports\u00a0alleged<\/a><\/span>\u00a0the same agency can access the servers of Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft and others to monitor users\u2019 video calls, search histories, live chats, and emails. It was long one of Washington\u2019s\u00a0worst kept secrets<\/a><\/span>\u00a0that data\u00a0about<\/i>\u00a0our communications (call logs, times, locations, etc.) were being monitored, but the revelation that the government has granted itself, without democratic consent, the ability to monitor the actual\u00a0contents<\/i>\u00a0of our communications is appalling.<\/p>\n

\n

Related: \u2018Mass surveillance is never justified\u2019<\/a> — Kirsty Hughes, Index on Censorship CEO<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today on Index<\/strong>
\n The EU must take action on Turkey<\/a> | Iran tightens the screw on free expression ahead of presidential election<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Index Events<\/strong>
\n Caught in the Web: How free are we online?<\/a><\/strong>
\n The internet: free open space, wild wild west, or totalitarian state? However you view the web, in today\u2019s world it is bringing both opportunities and threats for free expression — and ample opportunity for government surveillance<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Mass surveillance programmes have awful implications for freedom of expression. Index on Censorship\u00a0made this clear<\/a><\/span>\u00a0in regards to the UK\u2019s proposed Communications Data Bill last year. States should only limit freedom of expression when absolutely necessary to preserve national security or public order. In such exceptional cases, limits on expression should be transparent, limited and proportionate. La Rue\u2019s latest report adds that states should not retain information purely for surveillance purposes. The US programmes revealed this week grossly violate all of these principles.<\/p>\n

Surveillance is, by its very definition, a violation of privacy. La Rue\u2019s report rightly states that \u201cPrivacy and freedom of expression are interlinked and mutually dependent; an infringement upon one can be both the cause and consequence of an infringement upon the other.\u201d Without some guarantee or at least a (false) assumption of privacy online, we cannot and will not express ourselves freely. Mass surveillance programmes directly chill free speech and give rise to self-censorship.<\/p>\n

If the top secret documents outlining these programmes were leaked, what\u2019s to stop our top secret personal information, that which is being monitored by government agencies, from being exposed? These programmes and even more extreme efforts to limit freedom of expression online in other states are unjustified, disproportionate, secretive and often without adequate limits. La Rue\u2019s report calls for national laws around state surveillance to be revised in accordance with human rights standards.<\/p>\n

Brian Pellot is Digital Policy Advisor at Index on Censorship<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, a UN report outlined how state and corporate surveillance undermine freedom of expression and privacy. Today, the news turned to how far governments have gone to spy on their citizens,
\nBrian Pellot<\/strong>\u00a0writes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4883],"tags":[4799,921,269,390,7399],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47417"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48103,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47417\/revisions\/48103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}