A United Nations report concluded that mass surveillance of the internet is “corrosive” to privacy and violates international law.
The report came from the UN’s top official for counter-terrorism and human rights, or “Special Rapporteur,” Ben Emmerson.
“The hard truth is that the use of mass surveillance technology effectively does away with the right to privacy of communications on the Internet altogether,” the report reads.
Emmerson approves generally of counter-terrorism efforts, but draws out the distinction between targeted surveillance of someone suspected of a crime versus blanket surveillance justified only by claiming it might possibly help counterterrorism efforts at some point. “Merely to assert—without particularization—that mass surveillance technology can contribute to the suppression and prosecution of acts of terrorism does not provide an adequate human rights law justification for its use.”
The report repeatedly references Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States and most other countries are parties, which says that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home and correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.”
Emmerson concludes that mass surveillance is “indiscriminately corrosive of online privacy,” and that it “impinges on the very essence of the right guaranteed by article 17.”
The report also argues that classified legal justifications, like those used by the U.S. government, are inadequate: “Nothing short of detailed and explicit authorization in primary legislation suffices to meet the principle of legality.”
At the end of the report, Emmerson says there is an “urgent need” for states using mass surveillance to “revise and update national legislation to ensure consistency with international human rights laws.”
Although Emmerson does not single out the United States, its national security practices are clearly rejected in the report.
Additionally, the report claims that any internet user should be able to challenge the legality of surveillance in court—a claim not favored so far by U.S. courts, which have already thrown out complaints about mass surveillance.
Luckily for the NSA, nobody ever listens to the United Nations’ “urgings.”
