UN Concerned about Mass Surveillance Programmes


The United Nations News Centre highlights UN concerns about the increasing number of Government initiated mass surveillance programmes. It comes in the week that the UK Parliament approved the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers (Drip) bill, which makes communication companies store user data.

Launching the report Navi Pillay , the  UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that:

“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.”

A copy of the report is available here: The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age