Tag: UN

The revelations of mass government surveillance and pervasive monitoring of communications that broke earlier this year have led to an erosion of trust among internet users. So much so that organizations responsible for coordination of the internet’s technical infrastructure globally were compelled to release the Montevideo Statement on the “Future of Internet Cooperation.”

Today the U.N. General Assembly took a critical first step in addressing mass surveillance as a human rights violations with the passage of a resolution recognizing the right to privacy in the digital age.

As negotiations at the United Nations General Assembly over the right to privacy in the digital age grow heated, Access, together with Amnesty International, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, and Privacy International have written a letter to members of the General Assembly urging them to “take a stand against indiscriminate practices such as mass surveillance, interception, and data collection, both at home and abroad”.

The 8th annual U.N. Internet Governance Forum wrapped up late last month in Bali, Indonesia. This year’s official main theme was “Building Bridges – Enhancing Multi-stakeholder Cooperation for Growth and Sustainable Development”; however, mass online surveillance and a recently announced 2014 world summit on internet governance dominated many discussions at the IGF.

The United Nations is the site of the latest diplomatic response to revelations of mass surveillance by the United States and its allies. Today at the General Assembly, Brazil and Germany formally introduced their draft resolution on “The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age.”

The 24th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) opened last Monday, and already in the first week, internet-related human rights issues were highlighted as areas of concern by governments, civil society, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, alike. With the international community still reeling from the revelations of mass state surveillance sparked by Edward Snowden’s leaks in May, much, but not all, discussion of internet issues focused on how to protect human rights, in particular privacy, in the digital age.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has joined the chorus of international leaders reaffirming the need to protect human rights in the face of mass surveillance.

The UN World Telecommunication Policy Forum (WTPF) concluded yesterday in Geneva, with the adoption of six opinions to guide international policy on broadband and internet exchange point (IXP) deployment, as well as internet governance. That was exactly the plan–but what happened over the course of the three day meeting is revealing for the future of internet governance reform.

Last week, a review marking ten years since the UN World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) kicked off in Paris at UNESCO. WSIS was a pair of UN-sponsored conferences held in 2003 in Geneva and 2005 in Tunis, aimed at bridging the digital divide and generally advancing the global discussion about the internet and ICTs.