A/HRC/29/32 article 17 (2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, States are obliged to protect privacy against unlawful and arbitrary interference and attacks. Under such an affirmative obligation, States should ensure the existence of domestic legislation that prohibits unlawful and arbitrary interference and attacks on privacy, whether committed by government or non-governmental actors. Such protection must include the right to a remedy for a violation.9 In order for the right to a remedy to be meaningful, individuals must be given notice of any compromise of their privacy through, for instance, weakened encryption or compelled disclosure of user data. B. Right to hold opinions without interference 19. The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that everyone is “endowed with reason and conscience”, a principle developed further in human rights law to include, among other things, the protection of opinion, expression, belief, and thought. Article 19 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, also echoing the Universal Declaration, provides that “everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference”. Opinion and expression are closely related to one another, as restrictions on the right to receive information and ideas may interfere with the ability to hold opinions, and interference with the holding of opinions necessarily restricts the expression of them. However, human rights law has drawn a conceptual distinction between the two. During the negotiations on the drafting of the Covenant, “the freedom to form an opinion and to develop this by way of reasoning was held to be absolute and, in contrast to freedom of expression, not allowed to be restricted by law or other power”. 10 The ability to hold an opinion freely was seen to be a fundamental element of human dignity and democratic self-governance, a guarantee so critical that the Covenant would allow no interference, limitation or restriction. Consequently, the permissible limitations in article 19 (3) expressly apply only to the right to freedom of expression in article 19 (2). Interference with the right to hold opinions is, by contrast, per se in violation of article 19 (1). 20. Commentators and courts have devoted much less attention to the right to hold opinions than to expression. Greater attention is warranted, however, as the mechanics of holding opinions have evolved in the digital age and exposed individuals to significant vulnerabilities. Individuals regularly hold opinions digitally, saving their views and their search and browse histories, for instance, on hard drives, in the cloud, and in e-mail archives, which private and public authorities often retain for lengthy if not indefinite periods. Civil society organizations likewise prepare and store digitally memoranda, papers and publications, all of which involve the creation and holding of opinions. In other words, holding opinions in the digital age is not an abstract concept limited to what may be in one’s mind. And yet, today, holding opinions in digital space is under attack. Offline, interference with the right to hold an opinion may involve physical harassment, detention or subtler efforts to punish individuals for their opinion (see CCPR/C/78/D/878/1999, annex, paras. 2.5, 7.2 and 7.3). Interference may also include such efforts as targeted 9 10 8 See Human Rights Committee ghttp://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/download.aspx?symbolno=int%25 2fccpr%252fgec%252f6624&lang=eneneral chttp://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/download.aspx?symbolno=int%252 fccpr%252fgec%252f6624&lang=enomment No.16 and general comment No. 31on the nature of the general legal obligation imposed on States parties to the Covenant; and CCPR/C/106/D/1803/2008. Manfred Nowak, UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: CCPR Commentary (1993), p. 441.