A/HRC/23/40 varied data that reveal sensitive information about peoples’ daily lives, and individuals and businesses choose to store the content of their communications, such as voicemails, e-mails and documents, with third party service providers, access to communications data is an increasingly valuable surveillance technique employed by States. 42. The communications data collected by third party service providers, including large Internet companies, can be used by the State to compose an extensive profile of concerned individuals. When accessed and analysed, even seemingly innocuous transactional records about communications can collectively create a profile of individual's private life, including medical conditions, political and religious viewpoints and/or affiliation, interactions and interests, disclosing as much detail as, or even greater detail than would be discernible from the content of communications alone. 28 By combining information about relationships, location, identity and activity, States are able to track the movement of individuals and their activities across a range of different areas, from where they travel to where they study, what they read or whom they interact with. 43. Instances of access to communications data by States are growing rapidly. In the three years that Google has been reporting the numbers of requests for communications data it receives, such requests have almost doubled, from 12,539 in the last six months of 2009, to 21,389 in the last six months of 2012.29 In the United Kingdom, where law enforcement authorities are empowered to self-authorize their own requests for communications information, approximately 500,000 such requests were reported every year.30 In the Republic of Korea, a country of nearly 50 million people, there are approximately 37 million requests for communications data reported every year. 31 D. Internet filtering and censorship 44. Advances in technology have not only facilitated interception of and access to communications in specific cases, but have also enabled States to conduct widespread, even nationwide, filtering of online activity. In many countries, Internet filtering is conducted under the guise of maintaining social harmony or eradicating hate speech, but is in fact used to eradicate dissent, criticism or activism. 45. Filtering technologies mentioned above also facilitate the monitoring of web activity in order to enable the State to detect forbidden images, words, site addresses or other content, and censor or alter it. States can use such technologies to detect the use of specific words and phrases, in order to censor or regulate their use, or identify the individuals using them. In countries with high levels of Internet penetration, Internet filtering reportedly enables the censorship of website content and communications and facilitates the surveillance of human rights defenders and activists. 32 46. In addition to technologies that facilitate filtering and censorship, many States are conducting manual Internet filtering, by creating online police forces and inspectors in order to physically monitor the content of websites, social networks, blogs and other forms 28 29 30 31 32 12 Alberto Escudero-Pascual and Gus Hosein, “Questioning lawful access to traffic data”, Communications of the ACM, Volume 47 Issue 3, March 2004, pp. 77–82. See http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/. See http://www.intelligencecommissioners.com/docs/0496.pdf. Money Today, 23 October, 2012, citing the disclosure made by the Korean Communication Commission for the Annual National Audit of 2013 to Assemblywoman Yoo Seung-Hui, http://www.mt.co.kr/view/mtview.php?type=1&no=2012102309430241764&outlink=1. European Parliament, Directorate-General for External Policies, Policy Department, After the Arab Spring: New Paths for Human Rights and the Internet in European Foreign Policy (2012), p. 12.