Fwd: [foianet] URGENT: Call for signatures on Surveillance statement
Fabiano Angélico
De: "Helen Darbishire" <he...@access-info.org>
Data: 01/11/2013 08:31
Assunto: [foianet] URGENT: Call for signatures on Surveillance statement
Para: <foi...@foiadvocates.info>
Cc: "Nathaniel Heller" <Nathanie...@globalintegrity.org>, "Jim Killock" <J...@openrightsgroup.org>, "Renata Avila" <renata.av...@gmail.com>, "Anne Jellema" <an...@webfoundation.org>
Dear FOIAnet
I am writing from the Open Government Partnership meeting in London to urge you to sign a statement that civil society is issuing about the need for greater transparency around Surveillance.
Access Info Europe helped draft and has signed the letter. Please send your signatures to me and to Anne Jellema of the Web Foundation (an...@webfoundation.org).
Timing: we will issue the statement at the OGP meeting today but will continue to collect signatures through next week, with final date being Monday 11 November. Please sign today if you can!
Thank you in advance!
Helen
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Helen Darbishire
Executive Director, Access Info Europe
Mobile + 34 667 685 319
Skype: helen_darbishire
Twitter @helen_access
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DRAFT Statement of Concern on Disproportionate Surveillance
We, the undersigned civil society organisations, affirm our deep commitment to the goals of the Open Government Partnership, which in its declaration endorsed "more transparent, accountable, responsive and effective government" founded on the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
We join other civil society organisations, human rights groups, academics and ordinary citizens in expressing our grave concern over allegations that governments around the world, including many OGP members, have been routinely intercepting and retaining the private communications of entire populations, in secret, without warrants and with little or no meaningful oversight. Such practices allegedly include the routine exchange of "foreign" surveillance data in order to evade domestic laws that restrict governments' ability to spy on their own citizens.
Such practices erode the checks and balances on which accountability depends, and have a deeply chilling effect on freedom of expression, information and association, without which the ideals of open government have no meaning.
As Brazil's President, Dilma Rousseff, recently said at the United Nations, "In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy."
Activities that restrict the right to privacy, including communications surveillance, can only be justified when they are prescribed by law, are necessary to achieve a legitimate aim, and are proportionate to the aim pursued.# Without firm legislative and judicial checks on the surveillance powers of the executive branch, and robust protections for the media and public interest whistleblowers, abuses can and will occur.
We call on all OGP member governments to:
• recognise the need to update understandings of existing privacy and human rights law to reflect modern surveillance technologies and techniques.
• commit in their OGP Action Plans to complete by October 2014 a review of national laws, with the aim of defining reforms needed to regulate necessary, legitimate and proportional State involvement in communications surveillance; to guarantee freedom of the press; and to protect whistleblowers who lawfully reveal abuses of state power.
• commit in their OGP Action Plans to transparency on the mechanisms for surveillance, on exports of surveillance technologies, aid directed towards implementation of surveillance technologies, and agreements to share citizen data among states.
--
Anne Jellema
Chief Executive Officer
Cape Town, RSA
mob (ZA) +27 61 036 9652
tel (ZA) +27 21 788 4585
tel (US) +1 202 684 6885
Skype anne.jellema
@afjellema
World Wide Web Foundation | 1889 F Street NW, Washington DC, 20006, USA | www.webfoundation.org | Twitter: @webfoundation
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