A/HRC/27/37 A. The right to protection against arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, family, home or correspondence 15. Several contributions highlighted that, when conducted in compliance with the law, including international human rights law, surveillance of electronic communications data can be a necessary and effective measure for legitimate law enforcement or intelligence purposes. Revelations about digital mass surveillance have, however, raised questions around the extent to which such measures are consistent with international legal standards and whether stronger surveillance safeguards are needed to protect against violations of human rights. Specifically, surveillance measures must not arbitrarily or unlawfully interfere with an individual’s privacy, family, home or correspondence; Governments must take specific measures to ensure protection of the law against such interference. 16. A review of the various contributions received revealed that addressing these questions requires an assessment of what constitutes interference with privacy in the context of digital communications; of the meaning of “arbitrary and unlawful”; and of whose rights are protected under international human rights law, and where. The sections below address issues that were highlighted in various contributions. 1. Interference with privacy 17. International and regional human rights treaty bodies, courts, commissions and independent experts have all provided relevant guidance with regard to the scope and content of the right to privacy, including the meaning of “interference” with an individual’s privacy. In its general comment No. 16, the Human Rights Committee underlined that compliance with article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights required that the integrity and confidentiality of correspondence should be guaranteed de jure and de facto. “Correspondence should be delivered to the addressee without interception and without being opened or otherwise read”.3 18. It has been suggested by some that the conveyance and exchange of personal information via electronic means is part of a conscious compromise through which individuals voluntarily surrender information about themselves and their relationships in return for digital access to goods, services and information. Serious questions arise, however, about the extent to which consumers are truly aware of what data they are sharing, how and with whom, and to what use they will be put. According to one report, “a reality of big data is that once data is collected, it can be very difficult to keep anonymous. While there are promising research efforts underway to obscure personally identifiable information within large data sets, far more advanced efforts are presently in use to reidentify seemingly ‘anonymous’ data. Collective investment in the capability to fuse data is many times greater than investment in technologies that will enhance privacy.” Furthermore, the authors of the report noted that “focusing on controlling the collection and retention of personal data, while important, may no longer be sufficient to protect personal privacy”, in part because “big data enables new, non-obvious, unexpectedly powerful uses of data”.4 19. In a similar vein, it has been suggested that the interception or collection of data about a communication, as opposed to the content of the communication, does not on its 3 4 6 Official Records of the General Assembly, Forty-third Session, Supplement No. 40 (A/43/40), annex VI, para. 8. Executive Office of the President of the United States, “Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values”, May 2014 (available from www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/big_data_privacy_report_may_1_2014.pdf), p. 54.