DOCSLIB.ORG

Edward Snowden: US Government Spied on Human Rights Workers Guardian.Co.Uk, April 8, 2014 Tuesday, 934 Words, Luke Hardingtheguardian.Com

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Edward Snowden: US Government Spied on Human Rights Workers Guardian.Co.Uk, April 8, 2014 Tuesday, 934 Words, Luke Hardingtheguardian.Com Seite 1 Titelliste 1. Edward Snowden: US government spied on human rights workers guardian.co.uk, April 8, 2014 Tuesday, 934 words, Luke Hardingtheguardian.com Zur Liste zurückkehren Dokument 1 von 1 guardian.co.uk April 8, 2014 Tuesday Edward Snowden: US government spied on human rights workers BYLINE: Luke Hardingtheguardian.com LENGTH: 934 words ABSTRACT Whistleblower tells Council of Europe NSA deliberately snooped on groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International FULL TEXT The US has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organisations, Edward Snowden has told the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Europe's top human rights body. Giving evidence via a videolink from Moscow, Snowden said the National Security Agency - for which he worked as a contractor - had deliberately snooped on bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. He told council members: "The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organisations ... including domestically within the borders of the United States." Snowden did not reveal which groups the NSA had bugged. The assembly asked Snowden if the US spied on the "highly sensitive and confidential communications" of major rights bodies such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as on similar smaller regional and national groups. He replied: "The answer is, without question, yes. Absolutely." In live testimony, Snowden also gave a forensic account of how the NSA's powerful surveillance programs violate the EU's privacy laws. He said programs such as XKeyscore, revealed by the Guardian last July, use sophisticated data mining techniques to screen "trillions" of private communications. "This technology represents the most significant new threat to civil liberties in modern times," he declared. XKeyscore allows analysts to search with no prior authorisation through vast databases containing emails, online chats, and the browsing histories of millions of individuals. Seite 2 Snowden said on Tuesday that he and other analysts were able to use the tool to select an individual's metadata and content "without judicial approval or prior review". In practical terms, this meant the agency tracked citizens not involved in any nefarious activities, he stressed. The NSA operated a "de facto policy of guilt by association", he added. Snowden said the agency, for example, monitored the travel patterns of innocent EU and other citizens not involved in terrorism or any wrongdoing. The 30-year-old whistleblower - who began his intelligence career working for the CIA in Geneva - said the NSA also routinely monitored the communications of Swiss nationals "across specific routes". Others who fell under its purview included people who accidentally followed a wrong link, downloaded the wrong file, or "simply visited an internet sex forum". French citizens who logged on to a suspected network were also targeted, he said. The XKeyscore program amounted to an egregious form of mass surveillance, Snowden suggested, because it hoovered up data from "entire populations". Anyone using non-encrypted communications might be targeted on the basis of their "religious beliefs, sexual or political affiliations, transactions with certain businesses" and even "gun ownership", he claimed. Snowden said he did not believe the NSA was engaged in "nightmare scenarios", such as the active compilation of a list of homosexuals "to round them up and send them into camps". But he said that the infrastructure allowing this to happen had been built. The NSA, its allies, authoritarian governments and even private organisations could all abuse this technology, he said, adding that mass surveillance was a "global problem". It led to "less liberal and safe societies", he told the council. At times assembly members struggled to follow Snowden's rapid, sometimes technical delivery. At one point the session's chairperson begged him to slow down, so the translators could catch up. Snowden also criticised the British spy agency GCHQ. He cited the agency's Optic Nerve program revealed by the Guardian in February. It was, he said, one of many "abusive" examples of state snooping. Under the program GCHQ bulk collects images from Yahoo webcam chats. Many of these images were "intensely private" Snowden said, depicting some form of nudity, and often taken from the "bedrooms and private homes" of people not suspected of individualised wrongdoing. "[Optic Nerve] continued even after GCHQ became aware that the vast majority had no intelligence value at all," Snowden said. Snowden made clear he did believe in legitimate intelligence operations. "I would like to clarify I have no intention to harm the US government or strain [its] bilateral ties," he asserted, adding that he wanted to improve government, not bring it down. The exiled American spy, however, said the NSA should abandon its electronic surveillance of entire civilian populations. Instead, he said, it should go back to the traditional model of eavesdropping against specific targets, such as "North Korea, terrorists, cyber-actors, or anyone else." Snowden also urged members of the Council of Europe to encrypt their personal communications. He said that encryption, used properly, could still withstand "brute force attacks" from powerful spy agencies and others. "Properly implemented algorithms backed up by truly random keys of significant length ... all require more energy to decrypt than exists in the universe," he said. The international organisation defended its decision to invite Snowden to testify. In a statement on Monday, it said: "Edward Snowden has triggered a massive public debate on privacy in the internet age. We hope to ask him what his revelations mean for ordinary users and how they should protect their privacy and what kind of restrictions Europe should impose on state surveillance." The council invited the White House to give evidence but it declined. Seite 3 LOAD-DATE: April 8, 2014 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies All Rights Reserved Registered in England and Wales. No. 908396 Registered office: PO Box 68164, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1P 2AP.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Bulk Powers in the Investigatory Powers Bill: the Question of Trust Remains Unanswered
    Bulk Powers In The Investigatory Powers Bill: The Question Of Trust Remains Unanswered BULK POWERS IN THE INVESTIGATORY POWERS BILL: The Question Of Trust Remains Unanswered September 2016 1/10 Bulk Powers In The Investigatory Powers Bill: The Question Of Trust Remains Unanswered Introduction We are on the brink of introducing the most pervasive and intrusive surveillance legislation of any democratic country in the world. The Investigatory Powers Bill sought to answer important questions about the place that modern and highly intrusive surveillance capabilities have in a democratic society, questions that were raised by the Edward Snowden disclosures in 2013 and subsequent reports produced by David Anderson QC, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in 2015. But just a matter of weeks before the new law is enacted, significant questions of trust remain unanswered. This paper highlights some of the key flaws Privacy International sees in the current incarnation of the Investigatory Powers Bill, and urges the House of Lords to put the brakes on the bulk powers, about which many important questions remain unanswered. In this paper we set out how: • the Bill fails to provide sufficient clarity, which was promised at the outset of the legislative process, to alleviate confusion around the UK’s surveillance laws; • the Bill has not advanced transparency to the degree needed, still leaving most of the public in the dark about the extent of the surveillance powers; • significant questions remain about the Bill’s safeguards and oversight regime; and • major questions also remain regarding the bulk powers, even in light of David Anderson QC’s recent report.
    [Show full text]
  • IN the EUROPEAN COURT of HUMAN RIGHTS App No. 24960/15 10 HUMAN RIGHTS
    IN THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS App No. 24960/15 10 HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS AND OTHERS – v – THE UNITED KINGDOM THIRD PARTY INTERVENTION OF THE ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER Introduction 1. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (“EPIC”) welcomes the opportunity to submit these written comments pursuant to leave granted on February 26, 2016, by the President of the First Section under Rule 44 §3 of the Rules of the Court. These submissions do not address the facts or merits of the applicants’ case. 2. EPIC is a public interest, non-profit research and educational organization based in Washington, D.C. 1 EPIC was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values in the information age. EPIC routinely files amicus briefs in U.S. courts, pursues open government cases, defends consumer privacy, coordinates non- profit participation in international policy discussions, and advocates before legislative and judicial organizations about emerging privacy and civil liberties issues. EPIC is a leading privacy and freedom of information organization in the US with special expertise in government surveillance related legal matters. 3. The matter before the Court in 10 Human Rights Organizations and Others v. the United Kingdom impacts the human rights to privacy, data protection and freedom of expression of people around the world, which is reflected also by the variety of the applicants’ affiliations. The matter before the Court is an issue of broad international importance because it involves arrangements to transfer personal data between the United States and European countries.
    [Show full text]
  • Two Years After Snowden
    TWO YEARS AFTER SNOWDEN PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN AN AGE OF MASS SURVEILLANCE (COVER IMAGE) A student works on a computer that is projecting former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden as he appears live via video during a world affairs conference in Toronto © REUTERS/Mark Blinch 2 TWO YEARS AFTER SNOWDEN JUNE 2015 © REUTERS/Zoran Milich © REUTERS/Zoran “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.” Ben Emmerson QC, UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights EXECUTIVE SUMMARY On 5 June 2013, a British newspaper, The exposed by the media based on files leaked by Guardian, published the first in a series Edward Snowden have included evidence that: of revelations about indiscriminate mass surveillance by the USA’s National Security Companies – including Facebook, Google Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government and Microsoft – were forced to handover Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). their customers’ data under secret orders Edward Snowden, a whistleblower who had through the NSA’s Prism programme; worked with the NSA, provided concrete evidence of global communications the NSA recorded, stored and analysed surveillance programmes that monitor the metadata related to every single telephone internet and phone activity of hundreds call and text message transmitted in of millions of people across the world. Mexico, Kenya, and the Philippines; Governments can have legitimate reasons GCHQ and the NSA have co- for using communications surveillance, for opted some of the world’s largest example to combat crime or protect national telecommunications companies to tap security.
    [Show full text]
  • GCHQ, NSA Collected Webcam Images from 1.8 Million Yahoo Users
    GCHQ, NSA Collected Webcam Images from 1.8 Million Yahoo Users By Thomas Gaist Region: Europe, USA Global Research, February 28, 2014 Theme: Intelligence, Police State & Civil World Socialist Web Site Rights Under a program code-named “Optic Nerve,” the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), working in coordination with the American National Security Agency (NSA), has been collecting webcam images in bulk and saving them to agency databases. According to documents obtained by the Guardian (“Yahoo webcam images from millions of users intercepted by GCHQ”), GCHQ targeted 1.8 million webcam users in a single six-month period in 2008. Collection of images has been carried out indiscriminately, without regard to whether users were targets of an intelligence investigation. The operations collected imagery from the webcams by saving screen shots every five minutes during live video chats. The GCHQ documents also mention possible surveillance efforts involving other web-based video technologies, including the Xbox 360 “Kinect” camera, and indicate that Optic Nerve was still active as of 2012. Yahoo has responded with a statement condemning the surveillance operations, saying, “This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users’ piracy that is completely unacceptable, and we strongly call on the world’s government to reform surveillance law consistent with the principles we outlined in December.” Despite Yahoo’s criticisms, the major telecommunications companies have been collaborating with the NSA’s surveillance operations for years. The PRISM surveillance program, for instance, has been systematically spying on millions of users of Skype, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and others since 2007.
    [Show full text]
  • Secret Government Searches and Digital Civil Liberties
    Secret Government Searches and Digital Civil Liberties By Neil Richards* Perhaps surprisingly, the most compelling moment in Oliver Stone’s “Snowden” biopic is the sex scene. Halfway through this movie about government surveillance and whistleblowing, the audience is shown a graphic and seemingly gratuitous sexual encounter involving Edward Snowden (played by Joseph Gordon Levitt) and his girlfriend Lindsay Mills (played by Shailene Woodley). In the midst of their passion, Snowden’s eyes rest on Lindsay’s open laptop, the empty eye of its camera gazing towards them. In a flash, he recalls an earlier event in which NSA contractors hacked laptop cameras to secretly spy on surveillance subjects in real time. Edward and Lindsay’s mood was ruined, to say the least, by the prospect of government agents secretly watching their intimate activities. The scene evokes George Orwell’s famous warning about telescreens, the omnipresent surveillance devices in Big Brother’s Oceania, by which the Thought Police could secretly watch anyone at any time.1 It also has grounding in reality. The use of millions of hacked webcams as monitoring devices was a program known as “Optic Nerve,” which was part of the Snowden revelations.2 Another program leaked by Snowden involved the surveillance of the pornography preferences of jihadi radicalizers (including at least one “U.S. person”), with the intention being the exposure of their sexual fantasies to discredit them in the Muslim world.3 Snowden himself famously appeared on John Oliver’s HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” humorously but effectively reducing unchecked government surveillance to the basic proposition that secret surveillance allowed the government, among other things, to “get your dick pics.”4 * Thomas & Karole Green Professor of Law, Washington University School of Law; Affiliate Scholar, The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School; Affiliated Fellow, Yale Information Society Project.
    [Show full text]
  • Surveillance After Snowden: Effective Espionage in an Age of Transparency By: Robin Simcox ISBN 978-1-909035-18-8
    SURVEILLANCE AFTER SNOWDEN Effective Espionage in an Age of Transparency Robin Simcox Published in 2015 by The Henry Jackson Society The Henry Jackson Society Millbank Tower 21-24 Millbank London SW1P 4QP Registered charity no. 1140489 Tel: +44 (0)20 7340 4520 www.henryjacksonsociety.org © The Henry Jackson Society 2015 The Henry Jackson Society All rights reserved The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and are not necessarily indicative of those of The Henry Jackson Society or its Trustees. Title: Surveillance after Snowden: Effective Espionage in an Age of Transparency By: Robin Simcox ISBN 978-1-909035-18-8 £10.00 where sold All rights reserved Front Cover Image: Laura Poitras/Praxis Films (© wikimedia.org). www.istockphoto.com SURVEILLANCE AFTER SNOWDEN Effective Espionage in an Age of Transparency Robin Simcox www.henryjacksonsociety.org 5 SURVEILLANCE AFTER SNOWDEN Effective Espionage in an Age of Transparency Acknowledgments Many of those who agreed to speak to me in the course of this project cannot be named. They all have my thanks, as does Elliot Soward for his research assistance. Additional thanks to Richard Black, Samantha Feuer, Mark Finegold, Oscar Isham, Livinia Mouries, Jeevan Vipinachandran, Chris Underwood and Quentin Wight. About the Author Robin Simcox is a Research Fellow at The Henry Jackson Society, where he works on terrorism and security issues. He has written for the likes of Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, New Republic and The Atlantic; and comments in the media for the likes of the BBC, CNN, Sky News, al-Jazeera and Fox News.
    [Show full text]
  • Witness Statement of Eric King
    IN THE INVESTIGATORY POWERS TRIBUNAL Case No IPT/13/92/CH BETWEEN: PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL Claimants -and- (1) SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS (2) GOVERNMENT COMMUNICATION HEADQUARTERS Defendants WITNESS STATEMENT OF ERIC KING I, Eric King, Deputy Director, Privacy International, 62 Britton Street, London EC1M 5UY, SAY AS FOLLOWS: 1. I am the Deputy Director of Privacy International. 2. I hold a Bachelor of Laws from the London School of Economics and have worked on issues related to communications surveillance at Privacy International since 2011. My areas of interest and expertise are signals intelligence, surveillance technologies and communications surveillance practices. I regularly speak at academic conferences, with government policy makers, and to international media. I have spent the past year researching the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing arrangement and the materials disclosed by Edward Snowden. 3. I make this statement in support of Privacy International’s claim. The contents of this statement are true to the best of my knowledge, information and belief and are the product of discussion and consultation with other experts. Where I rely on other sources, I have endeavoured to identify the source . 4. In this statement I will address, in turn, the following matters: a. The transmission and interception of digital communications; b. The difference between internal and external communications under RIPA, as applied to the internet and modern communications techniques; c. Intelligence sharing practices among the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada (“the Five Eyes”); d. The UK’s consequent access to signals intelligence collected by the United States through its PRISM and UPSTREAM collection programmes; e.
    [Show full text]
  • After Snowden: Rethinking the Impact of Surveillance
    International Political Sociology (2014) 8, 121–144 After Snowden: Rethinking the Impact of Surveillance Zygmunt Bauman University of Leeds Didier Bigo King’s College London and Sciences-Po Paris Paulo Esteves Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro Elspeth Guild Queen Mary and Radboud University Nijmegen Vivienne Jabri King’s College London David Lyon Queen’s University and R. B. J. Walker University of Victoria and Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro Current revelations about the secret US-NSA program, PRISM, have con- firmed the large-scale mass surveillance of the telecommunication and electronic messages of governments, companies, and citizens, including the United States’ closest allies in Europe and Latin America. The trans- national ramifications of surveillance call for a re-evaluation of contempo- rary world politics’ practices. The debate cannot be limited to the United States versus the rest of the world or to surveillance versus privacy; much more is at stake. This collective article briefly describes the specificities of cyber mass surveillance, including its mix of the practices of intelligence services and those of private companies providing services around the world. It then investigates the impact of these practices on national secu- rity, diplomacy, human rights, democracy, subjectivity, and obedience. Large-Scale Techniques of Surveillance and the Global Reach of the Internet: A Permanent Gap Edward Snowden has famously disclosed extensive information about the prac- tices of the US National Security Agency (NSA) with regard to PRISM and other Bauman, Zygmunt et al. (2014) After Snowden: Rethinking the Impact of Surveillance. International Political Sociology, doi: 10.1111/ips.12048 © 2014 International Studies Association 122 After Snowden US surveillance programs—including Xkeyscore, Upstream, Quantuminsert, Bullrun and Dishfire—as well as the involvement of services in other states, such as the UK-GCHQ and its Tempora (as well as its Optic Nerve) programs.
    [Show full text]
  • Governing, Exchanging, Securing: Big Data and the Production of Digital Knowledge
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Columbia Law School: Scholarship Repository Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive Faculty Scholarship Faculty Publications 2014 Governing, Exchanging, Securing: Big Data and the Production of Digital Knowledge Bernard E. Harcourt Columbia Law School, bharcourt@law.columbia.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Computer Law Commons, Internet Law Commons, and the Privacy Law Commons Recommended Citation Bernard E. Harcourt, Governing, Exchanging, Securing: Big Data and the Production of Digital Knowledge, COLUMBIA PUBLIC LAW RESEARCH PAPER NO. 14-390 (2014). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1860 This Working Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Scholarship Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Archive. For more information, please contact cls2184@columbia.edu. COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL PUBLIC LAW & LEGAL THEORY WORKING PAPER GROUP PAPER NUMBER 14-390 GOVERNING, EXCHANGING, SECURING: BIG DATA AND THE PRODUCTION OF DIGITAL KNOWLEDGE BERNARD E. HARCOURT MAY 23, 2014 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2443515 GOVERNING, EXCHANGING, SECURING: BIG DATA AND THE PRODUCTION OF DIGITAL KNOWLEDGE BERNARD E. HARCOURT UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO/EHESS Paper presented at a daylong conference organized by Professor Pierre-Michel Menger, Collège de France « Big data, entreprises et sciences sociales - Usages et partages des données numériques de masse » Collège de France, Paris, June 2, 2014 DRAFT: MAY 23, 2014 © Bernard E. Harcourt – All rights reserved Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2443515 Harcourt: Governing, Exchanging, Securing May 23, 2014 GOVERNING, EXCHANGING, SECURING: BIG DATA AND THE PRODUCTION OF A DIGITAL KNOWLEDGE BERNARD E.
    [Show full text]
  • Mass Surveillance
    Provisional version Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights Mass surveillance ∗ Report Rapporteur: Mr Pieter Omtzigt, Netherlands, Group of the European People's Party “Our freedom is built on what others do not know of our existences” Alexandr Solzhenitsyn A. Draft resolution 1. The Parliamentary Assembly is deeply concerned about mass surveillance practices disclosed since June 2013 by journalists to whom a former US national security insider, Mr. Edward Snowden, had entrusted a large amount of top secret data establishing the existence of mass surveillance and large-scale intrusion practices hitherto unknown to the general public and even to most political decision-makers. 2. The information disclosed so far in the Snowden files has triggered a massive, world-wide debate about mass surveillance by the US and other countries’ intelligence services and the lack of adequate legal regulation and technical protection at the national and international level, and/or its effective enforcement. 3. The disclosures have provided compelling evidence of the existence of far-reaching, technologically advanced systems put in place by US intelligence services and their partners in certain Council of Europe member states to collect, store and analyse communication data, including content, location and other metadata, on a massive scale, as well as targeted surveillance measures encompassing numerous persons against whom there is no ground for suspicion of any wrongdoing. 4. The surveillance practices disclosed so far endanger fundamental human rights, including the rights to privacy (Article 8 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)), freedom of information and expression (Article 10, ECHR), and the rights to a fair trial (Article 6, ECHR) and freedom of religion (Article 9) - especially when privileged communications of lawyers and religious ministers are intercepted and when digital evidence is manipulated).
    [Show full text]
  • Bibliography
    Bibliography Ackerman, Spencer and James Ball. “Optic Nerve: Millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ,” The Guardian, February 27, 2014. http://www. theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam- images-internet-yahoo (accessed on August 1, 2014). American Bar Association (ABA), Model Rules of Professional Conduct. http://www.americanbar.org/ groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_ rules_of_professional_conduct/rule_1_6_confidentiality_ of_information.html (accessed on August 1, 2014). Ars Technica. “What the NSA can do with “big data,” June 11, 2013. http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/06/what-the-nsa-can-do-with-big-data/ (accessed on August 1, 2014). AT&T Corporation vs. Portland, US Ct of Appeals for 9th Circuit, No. 99–35609, June 6, 2000. http://www. fcc.gov/ogc/documents/opinions/2000/99–35609.html (accessed on August 1, 2014). Ball, James. “NSA collects millions of text messages daily in ‘untargeted’ global sweep,” The Guardian, January 16, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/ nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted- global-sweep (accessed on August 1, 2014). Bamford, James. The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. New York: Anchor Books, 2009. BBC. “China employs two million microblog monitors state media say,” October 2013. http://www.bbc.com/ news/world-asia-china-24396957 (accessed on August 1, 2014). DOI: 10.1057/9781137408211.0012 Bibliography Bergen, Peter David Sterman, Emily Schneider, and Baily Cahall. “Do NSA’s Bulk Surveillance Programs Stop Terrorists?” New America Foundation, January 2014. http://www.newamerica. net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Bergen_NAF_NSA20 Surveillance_1_0_0.pdf (accessed on August 1, 2014).
    [Show full text]
  • Two Years After Snowden: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Mass Surveillance
    Two years after Snowden: protecting human rights in an age of mass surveillance Executive summary “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.” Ben Emmerson QC, UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights On 5 June 2013, a British newspaper, The Guardian, published the first in a series of revelations about indiscriminate mass surveillance by the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Edward Snowden, a whistleblower who had worked with the NSA, provided concrete evidence of global communications surveillance programmes that monitor the internet and phone activity of hundreds of millions of people across the world. Governments can have legitimate reasons for using communications surveillance, for example to combat crime or protect national security. However because surveillance interferes with the rights to privacy and freedom of expression, it must be done in accordance with strict criteria: surveillance must be targeted, based on reasonable suspicion, undertaken in accordance with the law, necessary to meet a legitimate aim and be conducted in a manner that is proportionate to that aim, and non-discriminatory. This means that mass surveillance that indiscriminately collects the communications of large numbers of people cannot be justified. Mass surveillance violates both the right to privacy and to freedom of expression. This briefing presents an overview of the information that has come to light in the past two years about mass surveillance programmes run by the UK, US and other governments, as well as the key legal, policy and technological developments relating to mass surveillance and the right to privacy during this period.
    [Show full text]