A/HRC/41/35 and so forth. In short, interference with privacy through targeted surveillance is designed to repress the exercise of the right to freedom of expression. 22. It is not necessary to duplicate the extensive human rights reporting that has already been conducted by previous Special Rapporteurs, other mandate holders, the High Commissioner, the Human Rights Council, the Human Rights Committee and others, in which they highlighted the following key features of the human rights legal framework that protects against targeted surveillance. 23. First, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protect everyone’s rights to privacy, opinion and expression. Article 19 of both instruments protects everyone’s right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers and through any media. Article 17 (1) of the Covenant, echoing article 12 of the Declaration, provides that “[n]o one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence”. 24. Privacy and expression are intertwined in the digital age, with online privacy serving as a gateway to secure exercise of the freedom of opinion and expression (A/HRC/29/32; and A/HRC/23/40, para. 24). Article 17 permits interference with the right to privacy only where it is “authorized by domestic law that is accessible and precise and that conforms to the requirements of the Covenant”, is in pursuit of “a legitimate aim” and “meet[s] the tests of necessity and proportionality” (A/69/397, para. 30). Article 19 articulates a three-part test requiring that restrictions be provided by law and be necessary to protect the rights or reputations of others, national security or public order, or public health or morals. 29 The Human Rights Committee has emphasized that these principles, at a minimum, mean the following: (a) Provided by law/legality: any restriction must be formulated with sufficient precision to enable an individual to regulate his or her conduct accordingly and it must be made accessible to the public. Any restriction may not be unduly vague or overbroad such that it could confer unfettered discretion on officials; 30 (b) Necessity and proportionality: the State has the burden of proving a direct and immediate connection between the expression and the threat and that the restriction it seeks to impose is the least intrusive instrument among those that might achieve the same protective function;31 (c) Legitimacy: article 19 (3) imposes specific limits on the interests justifying restrictions. While it is common for States to seek to justify restrictions, especially targeted surveillance, on the bases of national security, the Special Rapporteur has found that this rationale should be limited in application to situations in which the interest of the whole nation is at stake, which would thereby exclude restrictions in the sole interest of a Government, regime or power group (A/71/373, para. 18). 25. The Human Rights Committee put these principles into practice in its 2017 concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of Italy under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR/C/ITA/CO/6, para. 36). It determined that the right to privacy required that robust, independent oversight systems were in place regarding surveillance, interception and hacking, including by ensuring that the judiciary was involved in the authorization of such measures, in all cases, and by affording persons affected with effective remedies in cases of abuse, including, where possible, an ex post notification that they had been placed under surveillance or that their data had been hacked (ibid., para. 37). The General Assembly, in its resolution 73/179, echoed these principles, noting that surveillance of digital communications must be consistent with international 29 30 31 8 Detailed explication of the three-part test under article 19 may be found in Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 34 (2011) on the freedoms of opinion and expression, paras. 5–9 and 22–36; and A/HRC/38/35. General comment No. 34, para. 25. Ibid., paras. 34–35.