United Nations to vote on anti-mass surveillance resolution

A United Nations committee has passed a resolution that explicitly condemns mass online surveillance and calls for its victims to have legal redress.

The UN General Assembly will vote on it in December. The resolution is a modification of an earlier resolution, passed a year ago, that slammed the monitoring and collection of people’s communications. The new version makes it clear that arbitrary surveillance and/or interception of communications is still a rights violation and possibly anti-democratic “when undertaken on a mass scale.” The resolution, which would not place binding restrictions on countries as such, also calls on the UN Human Rights Council to consider setting up a “special procedure” for protecting privacy. It was passed by the General Assembly’s Third Committee by consensus.