Edward Snowden revelations prompt UN investigation into surveillance

The United Nation's senior counter-terrorism official is to launch an investigation into the surveillance powers of American and British intelligence agencies following Edward Snowden's revelations that they are using secret programs to store and analyze billions of emails, phone calls and text messages.

The UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson QC said his inquiry would also seek to establish whether the British parliament had been misled about the capabilities of Britain's eavesdropping headquarters, GCHQ, and whether the current system of oversight and scrutiny was strong enough to meet United Nations standards. The inquiry will make a series of recommendations to the UN general assembly in 2014. Snowden had leaked “issues at the very apex of public interests concerns,” Emmerson said. “These questions are too important for the UN to ignore,” wrote Emmerson, who’s served as the UN’s top counterterrorism and human rights official since 2011.