This week, the United Nations human rights council announced the establishment of a special new role to look into issues pertaining to privacy, in the wake of the Edward Snowden surveillance revelations. Information activists argue that such an individual could play a vital role in protecting citizens’ right to privacy. Guess which country said it couldn’t support such a resolution? South Africa.
A resolution calling for a UN Special Rapporteur on privacy, spearheaded by Germany and Brazil, stemmed from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s expose of the extent to which government agencies in the US and UK in particular were carrying out covert surveillance on their citizens.
The resolution affirmed the right to privacy in the digital age and expressed deep concern at “the negative impact that surveillance and/or interception of communications, including extraterritorial surveillance and/or interception of communications, as well as the collection of personal data, in particular when carried out on a mass scale, may have on the exercise and enjoyment of human rights”.
It provides for the establishment of a UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, who will be appointed for three years to gather information on privacy-related matters and practice and report …