The protection of sources and whistle-blowers 2015, para. 23

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Paragraph text: Protection must also counter a variety of contemporary threats. A leading one is surveillance. The ubiquitous use of digital electronics, alongside government capacity to access the data and footprints that all such devices leave behind, has presented serious challenges to confidentiality and anonymity of sources and whistle-blowers. The problem of unintended self-disclosure has been a recurrent feature in the leading cases involving journalistic sources in recent years, in which the Government of the United States of America discovered probable source identities through telephone and e-mail records. Writers themselves report concern that their ability to protect sources is much diminished in the face of surveillance. National and regional courts in Europe have appropriately criticized extralegal approaches to compromising confidentiality. The Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, for example, protected the telephone records of a journalist because they were openly instrumental to the identification of those who had provided confidential information. The European Court of Human Rights emphasized the importance of providing "the individual adequate protection against arbitrary interference" caused by surveillance. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recommends that interception, surveillance and other digital searches "should not be applied if their purpose is to circumvent" source protection.

Body: Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression

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Reference: SR Freedom of Opinion, Report to the UNGA (2015), A/70/361, para. 23.