Tag: UN

For the second straight year, the United Nations has declared that government communications surveillance poses a threat to the right to privacy.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism, Ben Emmerson, released a report on October 15 critiquing mass surveillance of digital communications. Examining surveillance through the lens of state obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Special Rapporteur’s report takes issue with the lack of authorizing surveillance legislation, the failure to respect the human rights of those located outside national boundaries, and the need for surveillance to be governed by principles of proportionality, necessity, oversight, judicial authorization, and transparency.

The ninth annual UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) took place in Turkey in early September, placing a global spotlight on the country’s digital rights record. As we have seen in recent years, the UN-mandated forum has a tendency to give rise to complicated and unexpected consequences in its host country.

Access, in coordination with partners, has submitted a comment in advance of the Human Rights Council 2015 Universal Periodic Review of the United States of America, which calls for reform of current surveillance laws, including the establishment of remedial mechanisms.

This briefing note, prepared by APC and Access, highlights the key internet rights-related issues in the Human Rights Council’s agenda for the 27th session, as well as countries scrutinized in the Universal Periodic Review.

With the theme of “Connecting continents for enhanced multistakeholder Internet governance,” the ninth annual meeting of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is taking place in Istanbul, Turkey, 2-5 September 2014. Access staff is there, participating in a variety of pre-events, workshops, and high-level meetings.

This week, Azerbaijan is hosting experts from the UN to examine the impact of business activities on human rights in the country.

Access and other groups introduce updates to International Principles one year after their introduction.

A report by the top UN human rights authority condemns government surveillance practices for the “lack of accountability for arbitrary or unlawful interference in the right to privacy.”

In a scathing new report, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warns that mass surveillance is “emerging as a dangerous habit rather than an exceptional measure” and that “the very existence of a mass surveillance programme…creates an interference with privacy.” The commissioner also slams judicial review processes, writing that in many countries they “amounted…to an exercise in rubber-stamping.”