Coalition Submission to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights States NSA Spying Violates the Law

CIPPIC joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Privacy International in writing a submission to the Inter-America Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) as part of a thematic hearing examining the U.S. National Security Agency's (NSA) electronic surveillance activities and their consistency with human rights protections. The thematic hearing constitutes the first time that the IACHR (an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States and one of the key institutions that oversees human rights protections within the inter-American system) is to examine the NSA's mass surveillance programs.

The submission, which was signed by 24 organizations from throughout the Americas, highlighted the scope and legal framework of the NSA's surveillance programs and argued that these violated the right to privacy and free expression, as guaranteed by the Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man. In particular, the submission pointed to the indiscriminate nature of the NSA's surveillance programs as recently confirmed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden, as well as the explicit disregard for the human rights of non-US persons that is at the heart of its legal authorization framework.