24 Oct 13 | Campaigns, Europe and Central Asia, Events
Index on Censorship wants Europe’s leaders to place the issue of surveillance on the agenda for the European Council Summit. Our petition calling for this, backed by 39 organisations and thousands of individuals, was this week sent to Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė, who currently hold the Presidency of the Council of the EU, and Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council.
Since the petition targets all 28 EU leaders, we wanted each of them to have their own copy. But as revelations continue to emerge about the scale to which electronic mass surveillance has been taking place, we didn’t think email would be the safest way to distribute it. Instead, we decided to send our intern Alice to deliver the petitions to embassies around London – the old fashioned way.
Marek Marczynski, Index’s Director of Campaigns and Policy, explains how mass surveillance infringes on your right to freedom of expression, and why we must oppose it.
24 Sep 13 | Campaigns, Press Releases
Nearly 40 free speech groups from across the world are calling on the European Union to take a stand against mass surveillance by the US and other governments. The groups have joined a petition organised by Index on Censorship, which has already been signed by over 3,000 people. Celebrities, artists, activists and politicians who have supported the petition include writer and actor Stephen Fry, activists Bianca Jagger and Peter Tatchell, writer AL Kennedy, artist Anish Kapoor, blogger Cory Doctorow and Icelandic politician Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir.
Actor and writer Stephen Fry said:
‘Privacy and freedom from state intrusion is important for everyone. You can’t just scream “terrorism” and use it as an excuse for Orwellian snooping.’
Chief Executive of Index on Censorship Kirsty Hughes said:
‘A few of Europe’s leaders have voiced their concerns about the NSA’s activities but none have acted. We are demanding all EU leaders condemn mass surveillance and commit to joint action stop it. People from around the world are signing this petition because mass surveillance invades their privacy and threatens their right to free speech.’
As well as calling for Europe’s leaders to put on the record their opposition to mass surveillance, the petition demands that mass surveillance is on the agenda at the next European Council Summit in October.
The petition is at: http://chn.ge/1c2L7Ty and is being promoted on social media with the hashtag #dontspyonme
The petition is supported by Index on Censorship, Amnesty International, English PEN, Article 19, Privacy International, Open Rights Group, Liberty UK, Reporters Without Borders, European Federation of Journalists, International Federation of Journalists, PEN International, PEN Canada, PEN Portugal, Electronic Frontier Foundation, PEN Emergency Fund, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, National Union of Somali Journalists, Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, Catalan PEN, Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) – Malaysia, Belarusian Human Rights House, South East European Network for Professionalization of Media, International Partnership for Human Rights, Russian PEN Centre, Association of European Journalists, Foundation for the Development of Democratic Initiatives – Poland, Independent Journalism Center – Moldova, Alliance of Independent Journalists – Indonesia, PEN Quebec, Fundacja Panoptykon – Poland, International Media Support, Human Rights Monitoring Institute – Lithuania, Warsaw Branch, Association of Polish Journalists, The Steering Committee of the Civil Society Forum of the Eastern Partnership, South African Centre of PEN International, Estonian Human Rights Centre, Vikes Foundation, Finland
For further information, please contact [email protected]
24 Sep 13 | Campaigns, Press Releases
What is actually happening?
Following initial revelations in The Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reports by international media organisations, including the New York Times and Washington Post, have revealed that the US, UK and other countries’ governments have been carrying out mass surveillance of both meta data and content by tapping into communications cables. This means that governments are gathering and storing data about your phone calls, emails, texts and search and browsing history. They have the ability to access passwords as well as the actual content of emails, text messages and online chats. It is still not known how long this data is being stored for. Gathering and storing information in this way and on this scale is an attack on our right to privacy and a threat to our right to free speech.
Which governments are carrying out mass surveillance?
Most newspaper reports have concentrated on mass surveillance by the US government’s National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). However, there have also been revelations about France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Why is mass surveillance wrong?
Mass surveillance of private communications is an attack on our right to privacy and our right to free speech. Gathering data from entire populations is unlawful under human rights law as it violates our right to privacy. It also threatens free speech. How can we speak freely if our confidential emails, texts and chats are being read?
Is all surveillance wrong?
No. Governments and the police may need to carry out targeted surveillance to try and prevent crimes, including terrorist attacks. However, there need to be legal safeguards to prevent abuses of power and to hold those gathering information to account. There should also be transparency about how data is gathered, stored and used.
Surveillance should be targeted towards people who are suspected of planning or committing a crime, not entire populations. Usually decisions about who should be targeted by surveillance should be made by an independent body or by judges.
I haven’t got anything to hide so why should I be worried about mass surveillance?
Governments say that if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. In reality, restricting our human rights threatens the freedom and security that the same governments are claiming to protect.
Mass surveillance can be used to target activists, such as environmental groups, who are critical of government policies. Activists and opposition groups and the media should be able to hold governments to account without having their communications monitored.
Mass surveillance can also be used to monitor and threaten investigative journalism, threatening the anonymity of sources and potentially exposing lines of investigation. This in itself threatens the freedom of the press.
We all have a right to privacy and the state should not interfere in our private communications. After all, you wouldn’t want the government reading your letters, so why should they read your emails?
What can I do?
Sign our petition calling on the EU’s leaders to end mass surveillance. Share it with as many people as possible so that we can put pressure on the EU to take a stand.
What can the EU do about it?
Mass surveillance must be on the agenda when EU leaders meet in October. Firstly, the EU’s leaders need to condemn mass surveillance by the US, UK and other European governments. Secondly, they need to take joint action to stop the mass collection of data about European and other citizens.
Can I sign the petition if I am not an EU citizen?
Yes, and please share with friends outside the EU. We want people from around the world to come together to say no to mass surveillance.
This article was originally posted on 24 Sept 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
09 Sep 13 | Digital Freedom, News and features, Politics and Society, United States
(Photo: David von Blohn / Demotix)
It seems you can’t step away from the computer for more than a few hours these days without a story revealing previously secret information about the National Security Agency (NSA) setting the internet aflame. The scandal has sparked an investigative journalism renaissance with virtually every major news organisation in the country—not just the keepers of the Snowden files—getting in on the act.
Several stories of critical significance broke in the last two weeks. First, the Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA’s surveillance system, “has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans.” The Journal detailed the NSA’s direct access to telecommunications’ fiber optic cables around the country and their extraordinary reach into many corners of the web.
The next day, the administration finally released the 2011 FISA court opinion ruling some NSA surveillance unconstitutional, making front-page news around the country. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the organization for which I work, has been suing the Justice Department for its release for over a year. The ruling showed the NSA had vacuumed up more than a 150,000 Americans’ emails, only alerting the court to a collection method that had been in place for three years. The court also accused the NSA of “material misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program” on two other occasions.
Until two weeks ago, the administration had stuck to the talking point that all the privacy violations were unintentional. That was already cold comfort to Americans, as the Washington Post had previously reported, based on Snowden documents, that the NSA has been committing thousands of privacy violations, however unintentional, affecting untold number of people per year. And the numbers seem to be increasing.
Soon after the FISA court opinion was released, Bloomberg News revealed that a still-classified NSA inspector general’s report documented “approximately a dozen” willful privacy over the last decade by the NSA. This contradicted many previous statements by government officials, including NSA chief Keith Alexander, who said “no one has wilfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacy” at a speech on August 8.
The Wall Street Journal followed up, detailing how many of these violations consisted of analysts following former spouses or partners (nicknamed “LOVEINT”). The Journal explained that most of the violations were self-reported. How many went unreported we will likely never know.
Couple this with the fact that NBC News reported how Edward Snowden was able to browse the NSA networks for months without detection, and you have an agency which claims it has strict internal oversight procedures in place, but seems to have only one real mechanism for enforcement: self policing.
Amazingly, all of these stories have come since President Obama was forced to address the issue at a press conference just three and a half weeks ago in response to the first wave of stories published by the Guardian and Washington Post. At that point, the sea change in public opinion about civil liberties and privacy had become clear and Congressmen in both parties had been pressuring the White House for weeks. Obama promised more transparency to programs (it’s important to remember he also promised more transparency six years ago when he was first running for president), but there were no concrete proposals for reining in the out-of-control powers of the NSA. He did not even mention the two major stories of the day, one in the Guardian, and the other in the New York Times. Obama did say this, however:
What I’m going to be pushing the [intelligence community] to do is rather than have a trunk come out here and leg come out there and a tail come out there, let’s just put the whole elephant out there so people know exactly what they’re looking at. Let’s examine what is working, what’s not, are there additional protections that can be put in place, and let’s move forward.”
While the full elephant is the only thing that will satisfy the public at this point, disturbingly, Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, the lone NSA critics on the Senate intelligence committee, cryptically said in a press release after Obama’s press conference that we’ve only learned “just the tip of a larger iceberg.”
Congress is currently on August recess, an annual break where members return to their home districts to hear from their constituents. We can expect some sort of action when they return. Eighteen bills have already been introduced, with many more on their way, and as Politico reported, members from both parties are listening to people at town halls voice their concerns about NSA surveillance, “a sign that fears about the ultra-secret National Security Agency have spread beyond the Beltway as lawmakers embark on their annual town-hall tours.”
Meanwhile, the reporting will only continue, as the Guardian is now sharing some of the Snowden documents with the New York Times and ProPublica after GCHQ disturbingly entered the Guardian offices in London and oversaw the destruction of a copy of the Snowden files.
Early on, the administration and its defenders may have hoped the story would disappear with the next news cycle. It won’t. The NSA scandal is destined to a prime issue in the fall Congressional session, carrying into next year’s midterm elections. The administration’s attempts to calm the public with transparency-after-the-fact PR measures won’t change the narrative.
What we want to see is this headline: “Obama reins in NSA surveillance authority.”
This article was originally published on 9 Sept, 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
