The implications of States’ surveillance of communications on the exercise of the human rights to privacy and to freedom of opinion and expression 2013, para. 25
Paragraph- Paragraph text
- The Human Rights Committee analysed the content of the right to privacy (art. 17) in its General Comment No. 16 (1988), according to which article 17 aims to protect individuals from any unlawful and arbitrary interferences with their privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and national legal frameworks must provide for the protection of this right. This provision imposes specific obligations relating to the protection of privacy in communications, underlining that "correspondence should be delivered to the addressee without interception and without being opened or otherwise read. "Surveillance, whether electronic or otherwise, interceptions of telephonic, telegraphic and other forms of communication, wire-tapping and recording of conversations, should be prohibited." The General Comment also indicates that "the gathering and holding of personal information on computers, data banks and other devices, whether by public authorities or private individuals or bodies, must be regulated by law." At the time this General Comment was adopted, the impact of advances in information and communications technologies on the right to privacy was barely understood.
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Civil & Political Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Families
- Year
- 2013
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Reference
- SR Freedom of Opinion, Report to the HRC (2013), A/HRC/23/40, para. 25.
- Paragraph number
- 25
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