34 International Experts Weigh in On Mass Surveillance on Snowden Anniversary

Today, a group of over 400 organizations and experts, along with 350,000 individuals, continue to rally in support of the 13 International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance (the Necessary and Proportionate Principles) a year to the day after Edward Snowden first revealed how governments are monitoring individuals on a massive scale. The international experts who supported the Necessary and Proportionate Principles has issued a press release containing quotes from professionals weighing in on the need to end the mass surveillance.

For Immediate Release: Thursday, June 05, 2014

A huge international collection of experts have called on world governments to adopt the 13 International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance (IPAHRCS), principles aimed at putting an end to the blanket surveillance of innocent persons. The call comes a year to the day after whistleblower Edward Snowden first revealed details about how government spy agencies, including the United States' National Security Agency, are monitoring individuals on a massive and unprecedented scale. In the 12 months since the revelations, most world governments have ignored growing calls from citizens to put an end to this bulk collection.

The group of over 450 organizations and experts, supported by over 350,000 individuals from across the globe, have been calling for the adoption of new rules to protect innocent citizens from government spying. The 13 International Principles establish clear guidelines to ensure government surveillance activities are consistent with human rights. These principles were developed over months of consultation with technology, privacy, and human rights experts from around the world. The principles emphasize the human rights obligations of governments engaged in communications surveillance.

Group members are also recommending greater use of software libre, decentralized architectures, and end-to-end encryption to help safeguard citizens' privacy rights. They say citizens deserve strong data protection safeguards to protect their privacy from government monitoring.

Here's what international experts are saying about the Necessary and Proportionate Principles and the need to end mass surveillance:

Latin America

Luis Fernando Garcia, R3D (Mexico):"The 13 Principles are defenders of an Internet that constitutes a space for the exercise of human rights. By promoting its recognition, we reject the false choice between security and privacy and, at the same time, we defend the democratic aspirations of our societies."

Paulo Rena da Silva Santarem (Brazil):"Edward Snowden's revelations were crucial in ensuring that civil society had enough evidence to pressure our government for the approval of Marco Civil. Certainly, now is time for the Brazilian Government to take the lead by implementing the 13 Principles into domestic law, specifically against mass data retention."

Pilar Saenz, RedPaTodos (Colombia):"We insist that surveillance must be 'necessary and proportionate' and with independent oversight to prevent abuse of power."

Joana Varon, Center for Technology and Society (Brazil):"Snowden has provided us with the most powerful tool of our current era: information. Every single Internet user around the world should feel empowered by that and, as such, push for a change in current surveillance practices. Mass surveillance has nothing to do with security, it represents a serious threat to fundamental human rights. Any surveillance practice should be limited to what is necessary and proportionate, and that's why the 13 principles should be the starting point."

Ramiro Alvarez Ugarte, Asociacion por los Derechos Civiles (Argentina):"A year ago, we confirmed what many suspected. Now we know that basic human rights are being violated due to a wide system of mass surveillance which simply is incompatible with a free and democratic society. While Snowden has shed light onto these practices, in Latin America we remain in the dark. Unchecked and autonomous intelligence agencies engage in political surveillance all the time, as recent scandals in Colombia and Argentina have clearly shown. Massive or not, this kind of surveillance puts a check on democratic participation and region-wide reform efforts are as urgent as necessary."

Valeria Betancourt, Association for Progressive Communications (Ecuador - International):"It is necessary to reinforce the call to states to take measures that will put an end to privacy violations and ensure that legislation and practices related to communications surveillance, collection of personal data, and interception of communications, adhere to international human rights. A robust protection for human rights is a condition for democracy."

Jacobo Najera, free software developer (Latin America):"Snowden highlights the capabilities of the most powerful system of mass surveillance; and has reaffirmed that mass surveillance and the centralization of development processes and services on the Internet destroy the Net as we know it. There is a need to use and develop free software, end-to-end encryption, and decentralized services."

Ivan Martinez, President, Wikimedia Mexico (Mexico):"Freedom on the internet is an essential component of the Wikimedia projects, and a value that governs their overall performance. Its defense in the social context is a necessary task in many societies because of the temptations of certain political figures to place barriers on its development. As Wikipedians and promoters of free knowledge, in previous years we didn't consider it right to passively observe possible attempts to monitor peoples' actions on the net, and we always support efforts to guarantee a free internet without any kind of surveillance."

Claudio Ruiz, ONG Derechos Digitales (Latin America):"Snowden's revelations illustrate the significance of human rights on the Internet. In the post-Snowden era, states are not the only enemies to our civil liberties, private companies are as well. The fragility of our rights in the light of technological developments is to require all actors unrestricted commitment to protecting the privacy of all."

Katitza Rodriguez, International Rights Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation (Peru-International):"As our everyday interactions, activities, and communications now emit a continuous stream of revealing information, the question has become: How do we preserve fundamental freedoms in the digital age?" EFF International Rights Director Katitza Rodriguez said. "The 13 Principles explain how and why we must rein in unchecked surveillance state at home and abroad and protect the freedoms of everyone, regardless of citizenship or statelessness."

North America

Steve Anderson, OpenMedia Executive Director (Canada - International): "These 13 Principles represent the positive alternative to secretive and unaccountable mass surveillance. We all need to work together to rein in out-of-control government surveillance by making sure it is necessary, proportionate, and respects our fundamental human rights. Everyone deserves to keep their private life private and it's past time decision-makers listened to citizens and implemented these common sense international principles."

Jochai Ben-Avie, Policy Director, Access (United States - International):"The human rights that are negatively impacted by surveillance are some of the most treasured and the most easily invaded. The 13 Principles provide a framing against which government surveillance practices around the world can be measured and they are already affecting change around the world. The Principles are a rallying cry for human rights defenders, and the chorus of users who have already spoken out demonstrate that no longer will the public acquiesce quietly to mass surveillance. As we mark the one year anniversary of the first Snowden revelation and reflect on what we know now, we can see that the Principles have fundamentally changed the discourse and are one of the most powerful tools in the fight to limit how States spy on the users of the world."

Cindy Cohn, Legal Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation (United States): "Human rights law already strongly protects the privacy and free expression of people around the world, but the dramatically increased ability and willingness of the NSA, along with its counterparts, to engage in mass surveillance and to undermine online security required specific thinking about how to apply and preserve this important law in this radically new context. The 13 Principles accomplish this goal, providing a guidestar for nongovernmental organizations and governments around the world who want to ensure the ongoing protection of our fundamental freedoms in the digital age. They also serve as an important complement to the work that EFF and others are doing domestically in the US to try to rein in the NSA."

Tamir Israel, Staff Lawyer, Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC):"The long string of Snowden revelations have confirmed for us that the worst case scenario is true: state agencies have transformed our digital networks into a means of mass surveillance. If permitted to stand, this state of affairs threatens the very foundations of democracy by subverting our most powerful vehicle for those wishing to challenge prevailing opinion. It is incumbent on us to fix this problem, and the solution requires dynamic political, technical and legal solutions. The Necessary & Proportionate Principles address the last of these by reasserting privacy and other human rights in a way that is meaningful in this new technological era. They are designed to bring us back to a world where surveillance occurs only when it is needed and justifiable and to put an end to the current 'collect everything' reality that has crept up on us in recent years."

Christopher Parsons, Postdoctoral Fellow, Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto (Canada):"The past year has revealed that dragnet state surveillance has enveloped the world despite our nations' privacy and data protection laws, laws that have demonstrably been diminished, undermined, and evaded by privacy-hostile governments over the course of the past decade. It is critical that we take the initiative and work to better endow our privacy commissioners and data protection regulators with the powers they need to investigate and terminate programs that inappropriately or unlawfully invade and undermine our individual and collective rights to privacy."

Yana Welinder, Legal Counsel, Wikimedia Foundation (United States):"Untargeted surveillance means that people cannot anonymously share their wisdom online or freely read without the fear of constantly being watched. It's a threat to the very core of what makes us human--the drive to think and formulate ideas. The 13 Principles push back on that threat. They demand that governments avoid excessive surveillance and respect human rights."

Yochai Benkler, Professor, Harvard Law School and Berkman Center for Internet and Society (United States):"Because mass surveillance is technically difficult, legally suspect, and social taboo in democratic societies, the national security establishment has had to break or warp all other major systems in society to achieve it. What we learned from Snowden is that the ambition of the national security establishment has subverted open technical systems and the professional norms-based processes that undergird our technical infrastructure; undermined markets and commercial innovation; and produced a theatre of the grotesque where public accountability and judicial, executive, and legislative control should have been."

Eben Moglen, President and Executive Director of the Software Freedom Law Center (International):"If--by technical, legal and political means--we prevent centralized control and surveillance of the Net, we save liberty. If not, unshakeable despotism lies in the human future."

Cynthia Wong, Human Rights Watch (United States - International):"The Internet has become central to our lives. But the NSA and GCHQ's 'collect it all' attitude makes it incredibly hard for human rights defenders, journalists, and ordinary citizens worldwide to go online without fear. To accept these agencies' arguments for mass surveillance without challenge means the beginning of the end of privacy in the digital age."

Africa

Arthur Gwagwa, Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum (Zimbawe): "As the evolution of digital technologies outpaces international and regional regulatory consensus, the 13 Principles collect what little there is in the form of guidance, and proactively go beyond that by providing a sturdy, timeless, and universal framework within which national, regional, and international reforms on the presenting issues can sit and find strength."

Hisham Almiraat, Global Voices Advocacy (Morocco, International):"The advent of the internet marked a major milestone for human rights activists in some of the most repressive places on earth. It symbolized an unprecedented extension of the public sphere and a serious blow to governments' attempts to curtail freedom of speech. Mass, indiscriminate surveillance is threatening to destroy this progress. The 13 Principles offer a workable solution to balance security and privacy. We call upon all governments to adopt these principles in order to protect their citizens' right to privacy and freedom of speech."

Europe

Simon Davies, Publisher, "The Privacy Surgeon" (United Kingdom - International):"The majority of the world's governments have responded with either orchestrated deception or brazen indifference to the Snowden revelations. A year on, the secret arrangements that enabled the creation of a vast global spying regime continue almost unchanged. Initiatives such as the 13 Principles--and the huge coalition that supports them--can make a real difference to an arrogant and unaccountable spy empire that imperils the privacy of everyone."

Stuart Hamilton, Director of Policy and Advocacy, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (International):"For librarians, safeguarding the privacy of our users is a crucial professional principle. When people are under surveillance, they lose their ability to think freely--nobody likes to read with someone looking over their shoulder. The 13 Principles show us the way to ensure existing human rights law applies to modern digital surveillance. IFLA is proud to be a signatory."

Christian Horchert, CCC (Germany):"Snowden helped us to understand on what fragile foundation our information society is build upon. We are at a turning point where we need to decide how to move forward: Do we really want to live in a world of insecurity and mistrust or not?"

Joe McNamee, European Digital Rights, Executive Director (European Union):"We have slipped unconsciously into a world where basic concepts of democracy and the rule of law have been replaced by sophistry and impunity. The 13 Principles draw a clear baseline on which democratic principles, privacy and freedom of communication can be rebuilt.

Carly Nyst, Legal Director, Privacy International (United Kingdom - International):"The 13 Principles have completely changed the debate around communications surveillance. By providing a detailed, clear interpretation of human rights standards that is relevant and meaningful in the digital age, the 13 Principles have done what so many national legislatures have failed to do--update long-standing legal protections of the right to privacy in the light of new technologies that challenge traditional distinctions such as content vs metadata, nationals vs non-nationals, intelligence vs. law enforcement. The 13 Principles are the most important tool that civil society has to mould the crucial debate being had, in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, about the limits of state power to spy on citizens around the world."

Danny O'Brien, International Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation, (United Kingdom - International):"The application of international law has lagged for years behind the technological advances which have led to our current global surveillance state. The 13 Principles spells out exactly how we can update our understanding of human rights to combat this erosion of civil liberties. As courts around the world begin to tackle these issues seriously, it's invaluable for them to have such timely and precise guidance."

John Ralston Saul, President, PEN International (International):"The principles of expression are simple--maximum transparency in places of power, maximum free expression for citizens. Privacy is a key part of free expression. In private we work out what we will say and do in public. The growing use of secrecy and surveillance by governments and corporations is a direct attack on free expression. The use of fear to justify this secrecy and surveillance is a cynical diversion from the central issue. Free expression."

Katarzyna Szymielewicz, President, Panoptykon Foundation (Poland):"In the aftermath of Snowden's disclosures, civil society organisations have to speak with one voice to remind governments across the world what principles should apply when it comes to surveillance. The 13 Principles make it very clear that there is no way of reconciling mass, preemptive surveillance with the right to privacy and human rights safeguards such as presumption of innocence. The manifesto with 13 principles is our way of communicating these core values to decision makers and the media. However, we expect much more than public debate: we demand their implementation."

Friedhelm Weinberg, HURIDOCS (Germany):"There has been an incredible gap between the practices of mass surveillance and the protections everyone ought to enjoy under international human rights law. The 13 Principles have been the one crucial document that has fueled the process of addressing this gap, and closing it. Unlawful mass surveillance still occurs, but the 13 Principles are now so widely recognised that there will be no more excuses for everyone--government, businesses or others--not to do more to protect the rights of individuals around the globe."

Jeremie Zimmermann, La Quadrature du Net (France):"Our humanities are now indivisible from the Machine, we became the Cyborg. And now we see that the machine as a whole has been subverted to work against us, to spy on us and control us. We must fight back for our humanities against this oppressive Machine, with software libre, decentralized architectures, and end-to-end encryption."

Asia

Professor Kyung Sin Park, Open Net (South Korea):"The 13 Principles are the first attempt to create an international legal standard on the right to be free from surveillance, that is, surveillance by any government on any private person on earth via any communications medium."

Sana Saleem, Bolo Bhi (Pakistan):"The Snowden revelations were instrumental in exposing the corporate-government nexus that enables surveillance. The Necessary & Proportionate Principles are a much-needed step towards limiting states' power to infringe on our right to privacy."

Oceania

Joy Liddicoat, Association for Progressive Communications (New Zealand - International):"The revelations of whistleblowers, includiing Edward Snowden, have shone a bright light into the dark interior workings of modern democracies, revealing the deeply uncomfortable truth that our human rights are at grave risk at home from those elected to represent democractic values, including human rights to privacy. We do not want our governments to protect us--we want them to protect our rights, but when they will not, civil society voices and leadership must respond emphatically. The 13 Principles provide a clear set of guidance for the application and upholding of human rights in a digital age in relation to surveillance."

The 13 Principles state that surveillance is only permissible in strictly defined circumstances that respect citizens' human right to privacy. They state that governments should only engage in surveillance that is consistent with the following principles: Legality, Legitimate Aim, Necessity, Adequacy, Proportionality, Competent Judicial Authority, Due Process, User Notification, Transparency, Public Oversight, Integrity of Communications and Systems, Safeguards for International Cooperation, Safeguards against Illegitimate Access. More information on each of these Principles is available here.

Groups supporting the Necessary & Proportionate Principles include: Access, Association for Progressive Communications, Chaos Computer Club, Center for Internet & Society-India, Center for Technology and Society at Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Digitale Gesellschaft, Digital Courage, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fundacion Karisma, HURIDOCS, La Quadrature du Net, OpenMedia.org, Open Net, Open Rights Group, Panoptykon Foundation, Privacy International, Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), SHARE Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation

Hundreds of thousands of citizens are speaking out against mass surveillance