Navanethem "Navi" Pillay
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
16 July 2014 – The top United Nations human rights official today warned of the “disturbing” lack of transparency in governmental surveillance policies and practices, “including de facto coercion of private sector companies to provide sweeping access to information and data relating to private individuals without the latter’s knowledge or consent.”
“This is severely hindering efforts to ensure accountability for any resulting human rights violations, or even to make us aware that such violations are taking place, despite a clear international legal framework laying down Governments’ obligations to protect our right to privacy,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay said in Geneva today.
Introducing a report compiled by her Office entitled, The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age, she stressed the need for vigilance and procedural safeguards against governmental surveillance programmes.
“The onus is on the State to demonstrate that such interference is neither arbitrary nor unlawful,” Ms. Pillay said, noting that article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.”
According to the report, to be presented this October to the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly, governmental mass surveillance is “emerging as a dangerous habit rather than an exceptional measure” and practices in many States reveal “a lack of adequate national legislation and/or enforcement, weak procedural safeguards, and ineffective oversight.”
The High Commissioner’s report points out that the secret nature of specific surveillance powers brings with it a greater risk of arbitrary exercise of discretion which, in turn, demands greater precision in the rule governing the exercise of discretion, as well as additional oversight. Therefore, States must establish independent methods to monitor such surveillance one that include administrative, judicial and parliamentary branches of government.
...continues @ source ...
SOURCE - UN News Centre - here.
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COMMENT
Re: Article 17
US State Department arbitrarily opens incoming overseas mail and there's been all the NSA snooping and so on ... so it's all well and good to have these UNHCHR 'rights', but they don't seem to translate to anything in practical terms.
Anyway, report will be release in October.
