UN Human Rights Committee Calls for U.S. Surveillance Reform

¶ … UN Human Rights Committee Calls for U.S. Surveillance Reform

In order to preserve and safeguard civil and political rights, the United Nations monitors the protection of these rights by member states who have become part of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). As part of this legally binding treaty, the U.N. periodically assigns a body of independent experts to conduct an examination of how nations are implementing the protections guaranteed under ICCPR. This body, called the Human Rights Committee, then submits a report which "addresses its concerns and recommendations…in the form of 'concluding observations'." ("Human Rights Committee") Recently the Committee submitted a report on the United States and its current policy of surveillance of the internet and wireless communications. In response to this report a digital freedom foundation called ACCESS wrote an article titled "UN Human Rights Committee calls for U.S. surveillance reform" which supports the Committee's findings and recommendations.

The article firstly comments on the Committee's report, which was similar in nature to the ACCESS's own report on the subject written in conjunction with several other NCO's and sent to the U.N. some time ago. Secondly the article expresses the author's intent to demonstrate the legality of the Committee's findings and recommendations by explaining the ICCPR and the obligations member states have as a result of joining. The article then states a specific issue the Committee's report found to be possibly in violation of the ICCPR: Executive Order 12333. This order allows for a program called MYSTIC to "collect all telephone content from a target country for up to a month." (Mitnick and Brown, 2014) The report also found concerns with "bulk collection under section 215 of the Patriot Act and PRISM and upstream collection authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act." (Mitnick and Brown, 2014)