430 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 4 / 2014 fact that States have never before had the capability to conduct simultaneous, invasive, targeted and broad-scale surveillance as they do today”.4 After the initial revelations of Edward Snowden, former system administrator for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),5 the special rapporteurs on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression of the UN and the Organization of American States, in a joint declaration, “reiterate their concern at the existence of programs and security policies that could cause serious harm to the rights to privacy and to freedom of thought and expression” and “urge the corresponding authorities to amend the pertinent legislation and modify their policies in order to ensure that these programs measure up to international human rights principles”.6 Following on the concerns of Member States of the UN at the negative impact of these surveillance practices on human rights, on 18 December 2013 the General Assembly adopted resolution 68/167, without a vote, on “the right to privacy in the digital age”. In the resolution, which was co-sponsored by 57 Member States, the Assembly affirmed that the rights held by people offline must also be protected online, and called upon all States to respect and protect the right to privacy in digital communication. It further called upon all States to review their procedures, practices and legislation related to communications surveillance, interception and collection of third parties which potentially hold extensive amounts of information on individuals, generating a rich resource for identifying and monitoring terrorist suspects”, A/HRC/13/37, 28 December 2009, paragraph 20. See also “Compilation of good practices on legal and institutional frameworks and measures that ensure respect for human rights by intelligence agencies while countering terrorism, including on their oversight”, A/HRC/14/46, 17 May 2010, and “The Global Principles on National Security and the Right to Information” (“The Tshwane Principles”) issued on 12 June 2013. 4 A/HRC/23/40, paragraph 33. 5 See the articles published in The Guardian and The Washington Post between June and August 2013 including, among others, “NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily”, Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, Thursday 6 June 2013; “U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program”, Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras, The Washington Post, June 7, 2013; “NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others”, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, 7 June 2013; “UK gathering intelligence via covert NSA operation”, Nick Hopkins, The Guardian, 7 June 2013; “GCHQ tapped fibre optic cables for data, says newspaper”, The Guardian, 22 June 2013; “GCHQ taps fibre optic cables for secret access to world’s communications”, Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball, The Guardian, 21 June 2013; “The legal loopholes that allow GCHQ to spy on the world”, Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball, The Guardian, 21 June 2013; “GCHQ: Inside the Top Secret World of Britain’s Biggest Spy Agency”, Nick Hopkins, Julian Borger and Luke Harding, The Guardian, 1 August 2013; “BT and Vodafone among telecoms companies passing details to GCHQ”, James Ball, Luke Harding and Juliette Garside, The Guardian, 2 August 2013. 6 Joint Declaration on Surveillance Programs and their Impact on Freedom of Expression, 21 June 2013, (available at http://www.oas.org/es/cidh/expresion/showarticle.asp?artID=927&).
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