right to privacy

John Bates, the former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, has "warned against a proposal to include in the court's proceedings an outside privacy and civil liberties advocate, who might take positions counter to the government when it seeks permission to collect huge swaths of Internet traffic, email addresses, and phone communications," Foreign Policy reports.

Bates, in consultation with other FISC judges, wrote that "the participation of a privacy advocate is unnecessary--and could prove counterproductive--in the vast majority of FISA matters, which involve the application of a probable cause or other factual standard to case-specific facts and typically implicate the privacy interest of few persons other than the specificed target. Given the nature of FISA proceedings, the participation of an advocate would neither create a truly adversarial process nor constructively assist the courts in assessing the facts, as the advocate would be unable to communicate with the target or conduct an independent investigation," according to a letter sent to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Instead, the judges suggest that a privacy advocate only be appointed at the discretion of FISC judges and not have independent authority to intervene in cases.

The United Nations adopted a resolution, sponsored by Brazil and Germany in the wake of the revelation that the United States was eavesdropping on leaders in those countries, supporting the protection of Internet privacy, the BBC reports. The non-binding resolution affirms that '"the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online,'" the BBC further reports.

The hope of such non-binding international measures is that they will influence international norms.

The Washington Post reports on the recommendations of the panel, appointed by President Obama, to curb surveillance by the National Security Agency. Instead of the NSA collecting virtually all of Americans' phone records, the panel "urged that phone companies or a private third party maintain the data instead, with access granted only by a court order," The Post reports. The panel also suggested a ban on warrantless NSA searches for Americans’ phone calls and e-mails legally collected in a program at foreigners overseas, The Post further reports. The Obama administration says it will reveal proposed changes to surveillance, including taking into account the panel recommendations, next month.

The digital divide isn't just about access to the Internet.

The Guardian reports that most Internet traffic on the cloud comes from the developed world: "an estimated 60% of such cloud traffic came from Europe and North America, followed by the Asia-Pacific region (33%). Latin America, the Middle East and Africa together accounted for only 5%." Similarly, the rule of law to protect privacy is more advanced in the developed world than in the developing world (albeit with the caveat that the National Security Agency is engaged in massive surveillance that undermines that rule of law): as of this year, 101 countries had data privacy laws or bills in place, but only 40 developing economies have such laws or bills, according to The Guardian.

The Guardian also reports: "The Information Economy Report 2013, released on Tuesday by Unctad, the UN trade and development body, warns that the global shift towards cloud computing, which allows users to store and access data remotely, brings a range of legal as well as technological and infrastructure challenges for poor countries."

The Washington Post has another revelation on the basis of leaker Edward Snowden's materials: The National Security Agency is "gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world."

The Post further reports: "The NSA’s capabilities to track location are staggering, based on the Snowden documents, and indicate that the agency is able to render most efforts at communications security effectively futile."

Philip Alston, writing in Just Security, asks if the United Nations let the United States off the hook regarding Internet privacy. While the language of a United Nations resolution was watered down at American urging, Alston argues that there is good news in a resolution that is set to be adopted by the full UN this month. Among other good points, "by basing itself on the formulations of the right to privacy included in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the resolution implicitly rejects the US line that privacy rights derive only from a specific treaty which the US in turn insists has no extra-territorial implications," Alston writes. 

A United Nations committee has advanced a resolution sponsored by Brazil and Germany to make the right to privacy against unlawful surveillance applicable to anyone in the world, The Washington Post reported. The two countries sponsored the measure after revelations of monitoring  by the United States of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The resolution is expected to pass the United Nations General Assembly too, The Post further reported. While the resolution is not binding law, General Assembly resolutions " reflect world opinion and carry political weight," The Post also reported.

The largely symbolic resolution was watered down though. The Post reported: "The key compromise dropped the contention that the domestic and international interception and collection of communications and personal data, 'in particular massive surveillance,' may constitute a human rights violation."

The Recorder reports on a couple problems that arise out of large privacy class actions:

One, the classes are so large that, even though claimaints in class actions typically only are entitled to a small amount per person, they are too large to settle because they require settlement funds worth billions of dollars.

Two, the people whose privacy was invaded aren't known to the class-action lawyers and to the court and it requires further invasion of their privacy to identify them to give them notice of the class action.

Three, giving unclaimed, or cy pres, funds to legal charities is increasingly coming under attack.