Media Home
UN Web TV
UN PhotoUnifeed
UN / HUMAN RIGHTS SURVEILLANCE
STORY: UN / HUMAN RIGHTS SURVEILLANCE
TRT: 2.26
SOURCE: UNIFEED - UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGAUGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 23 OCTOBER 2014, NEW YORK CITY / RECENT
RECENT – NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations headquarters
23 OCTOBER 2014, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, dais
3. Wide shot, journalists
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism:
“We have reached a point at which it is now essential for states to squarely confront the reality, which is that massive surveillance programmes do away with to the right to internet privacy altogether. The use of technology which is capable of capturing all data, all the time, indiscriminately, is plainly incompatible with the essence of the right to privacy as we have understood it until now.”
5. Med shot, journalists
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism:
“The central distinction drawn in this morning’s report is between targeted surveillance, that is the situation where a state authority has a prior suspicion of a particular individual or organization and sets about to investigate their activities, and mass surveillance whereby states are able to secure bulk access to communications and content data without any prior suspicion.”
7. Med shot, journalists
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism:
“We know much more about the programmes operated by the United States and the United Kingdom than we do about the programmes operated by other states, and that is partly of course because of the revelations of Edward Snowden, published in The Guardian and The Washington Post, which provoked a public debate, both in the US and in the UK.”
9. Med shot, journalists
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism:
“Primary legislation is the only way forward for states so that there will be parliamentary debates through representative democracy, so that governments using this technology have to justify specifically what they are doing to their own electorates so that there will be some transparency and some collective responsibility.”
11. Med shot, journalist
12. Zoom in, end of presser
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, Ben Emmerson, today (23 October) said “we have reached a point at which it is now essential for states to squarely confront the reality, which is that massive surveillance programmes do away with to the right to internet privacy altogether.”
Emmerson said ”the use of technology which is capable of capturing all data, all the time, indiscriminately, is plainly incompatible with the essence of the right to privacy as we have understood it until now.”
The Special Rapporteur, who presented his report today to the General Assembly, said the central distinction is between targeted surveillance, in which “a state authority has a prior suspicion of a particular individual or organization and sets about to investigate their activities, and mass surveillance whereby states are able to secure bulk access to communications and content data without any prior suspicion.”
He pointed out that thanks to the revelations of Edward Snowden, published in The Guardian and The Washington Post, “we know much more about the programmes operated by the United States and the United Kingdom than we do about the programmes operated by other states” but it is expected that other states are practicing it as well.
Emmerson said “primary legislation is the only way forward for states so that there will be parliamentary debates through representative democracy, so that governments using this technology have to justify specifically what they are doing to their own electorates so that there will be some transparency and some collective responsibility.”
Special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.
Download
There is no media available to download.
