U.N. Urges Protection of Privacy in Digital Era

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/world/un-urges-protection-of-privacy-in-digital-era.html

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UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations adopted a resolution on Tuesday urging all countries to protect the right to privacy in digital communications and to offer their citizens a way to seek “remedy” if their privacy is violated.

Though not legally binding, the resolution signaled growing international attention to the issue of digital privacy, which it described as a human right.

The measure passed by consensus in the General Assembly’s human rights committee, which meant that it was not put up for a vote. But it was a result of intense closed-door negotiations, and it set the stage for a showdown in Geneva next spring, when the issue is expected to go to the Human Rights Council. Privacy advocates are pushing for the United Nations to establish a special envoy.

Germany and Brazil led the effort to seek the resolution after their leaders, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Dilma Rousseff, expressed anger over reports, fed by documents harvested by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, that American intelligence agencies had spied on their communications.

“Without the necessary checks,” said the German ambassador, Harald Braun, “we risk turning into Orwellian states, where every step of every citizen is being monitored and recorded in order to prevent any conceivable crime.”

The resolution was backed by 65 co-sponsors, but not by the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada or New Zealand, which make up an intelligence alliance known as the Five Eyes.

The resolution echoed a similar one passed by the General Assembly last year. But it had a few differences. For one, there was a reference to private companies, noting that states must respect international human rights law when they intercept private communications directly or extract personal data from a company. Private businesses are not directly within the reach of United Nations measures. The latest privacy resolution said only that businesses had a “responsibility to respect human rights,” though no legal obligations.

The resolution also for the first time urged governments to “provide individuals whose right to privacy has been violated by unlawful or arbitrary surveillance with access to an effective remedy.”

And it specifically included a reference not just to the content of Internet communications, but also to the collection of metadata, which could include the date and time stamps of email communications, for instance, or the length of phone calls.

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a blog post that “U.S. surveillance practices fall far short of these exacting standards.”

The United States Senate last week blocked a bill that would restrict the ability of the National Security Agency to collect records of Americans’ telephone calls in bulk.

On Tuesday, Kelly L. Razzouk, a senior human rights adviser to the United States Mission to the United Nations, told the human rights committee that the United States believed in privacy rights as a pillar of democratic societies, while welcoming “the resolution’s recognition that concerns about security may justify the gathering of certain sensitive information, in a manner consistent with international human rights obligations.”