[Chapter-delegates] NSA, GCHQ and international treaties

[Baburam Aryal]

Hello all
Tomarrow I'm participating in a program on PRISMA and its Effect in Nepal.
Any suggestions from local perspective ?

Babu Ram
President
ISOC Nepal


On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 2:15 PM, Elver Loho <elver.loho at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> A while back ISOC HQ released a fine statement on the whole NSA debacle:
>
>
> http://www.internetsociety.org/news/internet-society-statement-importance-open-global-dialogue-regarding-online-privacy
>
> The people who wrote that seem to know their way around international law
> and I've been waiting for a proper analysis of NSA and GCHQ activities in
> the context of various international treaties from anywhere, but either I
> haven't noticed anything like that or nobody has done it.
>
> Basically it would be really useful if a legal expert took Snowden's
> revelations about the mass spying activities of the US and various EU
> countries and did a point by point analysis of whether any treaties were
> broken and how ordinary citizens or nation-states could seek recourse under
> those same treaties.
>
> For example, US spying probably violates the International Covenant on
> Civil and Political Rights adopted by the UN in 1966, but the US is not
> party to the Covenant's Optional Protocol, which would allow ordinary
> citizens to file a complaint at the UN against the US.
>
> There is also the European Convention on Human Rights, where ordinary
> citizens probably can file complaints against UK and German spying in the
> European Court of Human Rights, as long as they are citizens of any
> European country, which has ratified the ECHR. Unlike some fundamental EU
> treaties, the ECHR should also cover the activities of intelligence
> agencies.
>
> And there are even more treaties, which might be relevant to this spying
> case.
>
> ISOC HQ probably has the resources (both monetary and lawyerly) to get
> such an analysis done. I'm wondering if I'm the only law nerd here or if
> anyone else would be interested in this as well? The NSA scandal is not
> going away anytime soon and this kind of analysis could feed meaningful
> information to chapters around the world that they could use as substantial
> talking points.
>
> Best,
> Elver
>
> elver.loho at gmail.com
> +372 5661 6933
> skype: elver.loho
>
> _______________________________________________
> As an Internet Society Chapter Officer you are automatically subscribed
> to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet Society
> Chapter Portal (AMS): https://portal.isoc.org
>



-- 
Advocate Babu Ram Aryal
President,
Internet Society [ISOC] Nepal Chapter
Anamnagar, Kathmandu
Nepal

Cell: +977-9851048401
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/private/chapter-delegates/attachments/20130708/6c4d7392/attachment.htm>