Hot on the heels of the IT industry's Reform Government Surveillance group open letter to the US Government yesterday, today a group of 560 international authors from 81 countries, including 5 Nobel Laureates delivered a letter to the United Nations petitioning for international law to protect the digital rights of humans everywhere.
While we might welcome the letter from the IT industry group as helpful pressure to focus US government attention on the problem, a deep dive into the content of that letter and the supporting manifesto revels the basically self-serving nature of it including some proposals that are actually counter to the interests of private citizens and well as the rule of law by sovereign nations that might impose laws to protect their citizens in the absence of international law. Should we expect more from multinational corporations that appropriate the data of internet users to generate profits often in ways arguably worse than the NSA in a WoW chatroom?
The writers deliver. Writing in the abstract yet connecting the dots, the petition cuts to the heart of the abuses perpetuated by governments and corporations alike, calling on them in equal measure to respect the basic human rights of all people regardless of nationality.
In doing so, they not only protect (in principle) the commercial interests elaborated by the industry in a self-serving fashion, but turn the knife on the industry with words that would protect private citizens rights from the abuses of corporations.
I guess we can say, never send a corporate lawyer to do a writer's job, LOL.
Rather than waste space with my own opinions, please go over the fold for a transcript of the letter and links, they do a far better than I ever could.
Thanks for your comments too.
Text of the Letter and Public Petition
A stand for democracy in a digital age
In recent months, the extent of mass surveillance has become common knowledge. With a few clicks of the mouse the state can access your mobile device, your email, your social networking and internet searches. It can follow your political leanings and activities and, in partnership with internet corporations, it collects and stores your data, and thus can predict your consumption and behaviour.
The basic pillar of democracy is the inviolable integrity of the individual. Human integrity extends beyond the physical body. In their thoughts and in their personal environments and communications, all humans have the right to remain unobserved and unmolested.
This fundamental human right has been rendered null and void through abuse of technological developments by states and corporations for mass surveillance purposes.
A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy. To maintain any validity, our democratic rights must apply in virtual as in real space.
• Surveillance violates the private sphere and compromises freedom of thought and opinion.
• Mass surveillance treats every citizen as a potential suspect. It overturns one of our historical triumphs, the presumption of innocence.
• Surveillance makes the individual transparent, while the state and the corporation operate in secret. As we have seen, this power is being systemically abused.
• Surveillance is theft. This data is not public property: it belongs to us. When it is used to predict our behaviour, we are robbed of something else: the principle of free will crucial to democratic liberty.
WE DEMAND THE RIGHT for all people to determine, as democratic citizens, to what extent their personal data may be legally collected, stored and processed, and by whom; to obtain information on where their data is stored and how it is being used; to obtain the deletion of their data if it has been illegally collected and stored.
WE CALL ON ALL STATES AND CORPORATIONS to respect these rights.
WE CALL ON ALL CITIZENS to stand up and defend these rights.
WE CALL ON THE UNITED NATIONS to acknowledge the central importance of protecting civil rights in the digital age, and to create an international bill of digital rights.
WE CALL ON GOVERNMENTS to sign and adhere to such a convention.
[Signed by more than 500 writers from around the world]
Thanks to The Guardian for their continued reporting and worthwhile commentary here, here and here with a H/T to Eddie Snowden from their readers.