Internet Surveillance and Free Speech: the United Nations Makes the Connection

Frank La Rue, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion delivered this week a landmark report [PDF] on state surveillance and freedom of expression. In preparation, the Special Rapporteur reviewed relevant studies, consulted with experts including EFF, and participated in the state surveillance and human rights workshop we organized last year.  Today, EFF's Katitza Rodriguez has been taking part in the first detailed conversation about State Surveillance and Human Rights at the U.N., held by the 47 member states of the Human Rights Council during the U.N.'s 23th session in Geneva.

At a time when efforts by states to conduct communications surveillance are rapidly proliferating across the globe, La Rue makes the case for a direct relationship between state surveillance, privacy and freedom of expression:

The right to privacy is often understood as an essential requirement for the realization of the right to freedom of expression. Undue interference with individuals’ privacy can both directly and indirectly limit the free development and exchange of ideas. … An infringement upon one right can be both the cause and consequence of an infringement upon the other.

La Rue’s landmark report could not come at a better time. The explosion of online expression we've seen in the past decade is now being followed by an explosion of communications surveillance.  For many, the Internet and mobile telephony are no longer platforms where private communication is shielded from governments knowing when, where, and with whom a communication has occurred.  

The report acknowledges the benefits of technological innovations that have enabled rapid, anonymous, cross-cultural dialogues around the world. Nevertheless, the report warns that these same technologies can open a Pandora's box of previously unimaginable state surveillance intrusions.

“The Internet has facilitated the development of large amounts of transactional data by and about individuals. This information, known as communications data or metadata, includes personal information on individuals, their location and online activities, and logs and related information about the e-mails and messages they send or receive.”

The report explains how metadata can reveal sensitive information that can be easily accessed, stored, mined and exploited.

Communications data are storable, accessible and searchable, and their disclosure to and use by State authorities are largely unregulated.  Analysis of this data can be both highly revelatory and invasive, particularly when data is combined and aggregated. As such, States are increasingly drawing on communications data to support law enforcement or national security investigations. States are also compelling the preservation and retention of communication data to enable them to conduct historical surveillance.”

As La Rue indicates, it is the capacity of new technologies to instantly aggregate and analyze data makes it a beacon of one’s online presence. EFF believes that “metadata”1—information logging individuals’ communication activities—is as sensitive as the content of communication and therefore deserves strong human rights protections.

For example, with all the amount of information and evolving surveillance technologies, law enforcement agencies now can:

• Directly observe people's relationships and interactions and make inferences about their intimate and protected relationships. 
• Examine millions of people's communications and rapidly identify precise communications interactions on any given topic.
• Track any person's physical movements almost all of the time and draw conclusions about one’s professional, sexual, political, and religious activiti