{"id":19245,"date":"2014-07-17T20:45:18","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T12:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=19245"},"modified":"2014-07-16T20:48:34","modified_gmt":"2014-07-16T12:48:34","slug":"un-nations-hiding-increased-use-of-private-companies-for-digital-snooping-on-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/07\/17\/un-nations-hiding-increased-use-of-private-companies-for-digital-snooping-on-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"UN: Nations hiding increased use of private companies for digital snooping on citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"

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GENEVA\u2014Governments on every continent are hiding an increasing reliance on private companies to snoop on citizens\u2019 digital lives, the U.N. human rights office said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Stepping into a fierce debate over digital privacy rights, the U.N. office says it has strong evidence of a growing complicity among private companies in government spying. It says governments around the world are using both the law and covert methods to access private content and metadata.<\/p>\n

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the lack of transparency and tactics extend to governments\u2019 \u201cde facto coercion of companies to gain broad access to information and data on citizens without them knowing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her office\u2019s report to the U.N. General Assembly says concerns about the erosion in privacy have increased since last year\u2019s revelations of U.S. and British mass surveillance. The report said stricter laws are needed to prevent violations and ensure accountability when digital technology and surveillance is misused. It warned that mass surveillance is becoming \u201ca dangerous habit rather than an exceptional measure.\u201d<\/p>\n

By law, Pillay said, governments must demonstrate the interference isn\u2019t arbitrary or illegal.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecret rules and secret interpretations\u2014even secret judicial interpretations\u2014of law do not have the necessary qualities of \u2018law,\u201d\u2018 the report says. \u201cAny capture of communications data is potentially an interference with privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report comes as American technology companies\u2019 reputations suffer from the perception they can\u2019t protect customer data from U.S. spy agencies. The German government said last month it is ending a contract with Verizon over security concerns.<\/p>\n

But U.S. officials say European and other foreign intelligence agencies also routinely demand co-operation from their national companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll countries should immediately start to review their digital surveillance practices and bring them in line with international rights standards,\u201d Human Rights Watch researcher Cynthia Wong said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GENEVA\u2014Governments on every continent are hiding an increasing reliance on private companies to snoop on citizens\u2019 digital lives, the U.N. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":19246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","mauthors-john-heilprin","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}