A/HRC/23/40 may be more vulnerable to State communications surveillance. Without strong legal protections in place, journalists, human rights defenders and political activists risk being subjected to arbitrary surveillance activities. 52. Surveillance of human rights defenders in many countries has been well documented. On these occasions, human rights defenders and political activists report having their phone calls and e-mails monitored, and their movements tracked. Journalists are also particularly vulnerable to becoming targets of communications surveillance because of their reliance on online communication. In order to receive and pursue information from confidential sources, including whistleblowers, journalists must be able to rely on the privacy, security and anonymity of their communications. An environment where surveillance is widespread, and unlimited by due process or judicial oversight, cannot sustain the presumption of protection of sources. Even a narrow, non-transparent, undocumented, executive use of surveillance may have a chilling effect without careful and public documentation of its use, and known checks and balances to prevent its misuse. 53. The following subsections list common concerns regarding laws that allow State surveillance of communications surveillance in circumstances that threaten the rights to freedom of expression and privacy. A. Lack of judicial oversight 54. Whereas traditionally communications surveillance was required to be authorized by the judiciary, increasingly this requirement is being weakened or removed. In some countries, interception of communications can be authorized by a governmental minister, their delegate, or a committee. In the United Kingdom, for example, interception of communications is authorized by the Secretary of State; 33 in Zimbabwe, interception of communications is authorized by the Minister for Transport and Communication. 34 Progressively, communications surveillance can also be authorized on a broad and indiscriminate basis, without the need for law enforcement authorities to establish the factual basis for the surveillance on a case-by-case basis. 55. Many States have dispensed with the need for law enforcement agencies to return to the court for ongoing supervision after an interception order is issued. Under the Kenyan Prevention of Terrorism Act 2012, for example, interception of communications can be conducted over an indefinite period of time, without any requirement that law enforcement agencies report back to a court or seek an extension. Some States impose time limits on the execution of interception orders but enable law enforcement authorities to renew such orders repeatedly and indefinitely. 56. Even when judicial authorization is required by law, often it is de facto an arbitrary approval of law enforcement requests. This is particularly the case where the threshold required to be established by law enforcement is low. For example, the Ugandan Regulation of Interception of Communications Act 2010 only requires law enforcement authorities to demonstrate that “reasonable” grounds exist to allow the interception to take place. In such instances, the burden of proof to establish the necessity for surveillance is extremely low, given the potential for surveillance to result in investigation, discrimination or violations of human rights. In other countries, a complex array of laws authorizes access to and surveillance of communications under a range of different circumstances. In Indonesia, for example, the Psychotropic Law, Narcotics Law, Electronic Information and Transaction 33 34 14 Section 5, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Section 5, Interception of Communications Act 2006.