World Fights Back Against the Biggest Brother in History

By Sonali Kolhatkar, Truthdig

29 November 13

he United States' vast and indiscriminate worldwide surveillance of ordinary people and heads of state has no historical precedent. Now countries around the world are fighting back using the United Nations as a vehicle for change. In a move that received little media coverage in the U.S., a United Nations committee approved without a vote a draft resolution entitled "The Right to Privacy in a Digital Age." The nonbinding resolution, which will now head to the General Assembly where it has broad support, follows from a report published in June by the United Nations Human Rights Council. It detailed the negative impact of state surveillance on free expression and human rights and lamented that technology has outpaced legislation.

The remarkable U.N. draft resolution affirms privacy as a human right, on par with other globally recognized civil and political rights. Several leading advocacy groups, including Access Now, Amnesty International, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch and Privacy International, signed an open letter to the U.N. General Assembly backing the resolution. The letter stresses the "importance of protecting privacy and free expression in the face of technological advancements and encroaching State power."

Carly Nyst, the head of international advocacy at Privacy International, told me, "This resolution could not be more important. At the moment we're seeing serious threats to the protection of the right to privacy in the form of [National Security Agency] spying but also in the form of other surveillance practices that are taking place across the world. We think that voting in favor of this resolution is a really important stand for states to take so that they will no longer stand for global surveillance practices undertaken by the U.S. and others. This is a pivotal moment."

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