A/HRC/23/40 and the implications for individuals’ rights. At the same time, the absence of laws to regulate global communications surveillance and sharing arrangements has resulted in ad hoc practices that are beyond the supervision of any independent authority. Today, in many States, access to communications data can be conducted by a wide range of public bodies for a wide range of purposes, often without judicial authorization and independent oversight. In addition, States have sought to adopt surveillance arrangements that purport to have extra-territorial effect. 18. Human rights mechanisms have been equally slow to assess the human rights implications of the Internet and new technologies on communications surveillance and access to communications data. The consequences of expanding States’ surveillance powers and practices for the rights to privacy and freedom of opinion and expression, and the interdependence of those two rights, have yet to be comprehensively considered by the Human Rights Council, special procedures mandate holders or human rights treaty bodies. This report seeks to rectify this. IV. International human rights framework 19. The right to freedom of opinion and expression is guaranteed under articles 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which affirm that everyone has the right to hold opinions without interference, and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds through any media and regardless of frontiers. At the regional level, the right is protected by the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (art. 9), the American Convention on Human Rights (art. 13); and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (art. 10). 20. At both the international and regional levels, privacy is also unequivocally recognized as a fundamental human right. The right to privacy is enshrined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (art. 12), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, art. 17), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (art. 16), and the International Convention on the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (art. 14). At the regional level, the right to privacy is protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (art. 8) and the American Convention on Human Rights (art. 11). 21. Despite the widespread recognition of the obligation to protect privacy, the specific content of this right was not fully developed by international human rights protection mechanisms at the time of its inclusion in the above-mentioned human rights instruments. The lack of explicit articulation of the content of this right has contributed to difficulties in its application and enforcement.3 As the right to privacy is a qualified right, its interpretation raises challenges with respect to what constitutes the private sphere and in establishing notions of what constitutes public interest. The rapid and monumental changes to communications and information technologies experienced in recent decades have also irreversibly affected our understandings of the boundaries between private and public spheres. 22. Privacy can be defined as the presumption that individuals should have an area of autonomous development, interaction and liberty, a “private sphere” with or without interaction with others, free from State intervention and from excessive unsolicited 3 6 UNESCO, Global Survey on Internet Privacy and Freedom of Expression, 2012, p. 51.