Surveillance, Security and Human Rights

The Chinese government must immediately repeal a new national security law that gives the authorities sweeping powers to crack down on and suppress human rights, Amnesty International said.

China's legislature today passed the law which defines "national security" in broad and vague terms, covering areas including politics, culture, finance and the internet.

"The definition of 'national security' under the law is virtually limitless. The law gives a blank cheque to the government to punish and monitor anyone it does not like - human rights activists, government critics and other opposition voices," said Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International's Regional Director for East Asia.

"The law clearly has more to do with protecting the Communist Party's control of the country than with national security. The leadership of the Party and its monopoly on political power is explicitly listed as being part of 'national security' in the law."

(Nairobi, April 13, 2015) – The Kenyan government should urgently review the inclusion of human rights organizations on an official list of alleged supporters of terrorism and ensure full respect of due process, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today.

The list is comprised of 86 individuals and entities, and includes two human rights groups, Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI) and Haki Africa.  The list was published in the official government gazette on April 7, 2015, days after the attack on Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya in which 147 people, including 142 students, were killed. The militant Islamist group, Al-Shabaab, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Amnesty International USA has gone to court, represented by the ACLU, because in a world under threat of constant, all-encompassing surveillance, our work to protect human rights is made much harder.

The U.S. surveillance machine is thwarting Amnesty International USA’s ability to protect people from human rights violations: including governments that torture, kidnap and extrajudiciallly kill people for their non-violent protest, dissent and activism.

Here are 8 facts you need to know about how Amnesty International works – and why mass surveillance harms our ability to protect human rights:

1. Amnesty International bears witness to brutality, violence and atrocities. We send researchers into conflict zones. We are on the ground in places throughout the world to collect evidence of human rights abuses.

We ask people to tell us the horrors they saw – whether they are the witnesses or the lone survivors.

By Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada. Follow Alex on Twitter: @AlexNeveAmnesty

There is so much packed into the government’s current national security law reform, it is hard to know where to focus.  Bills C-44 and C-51, currently before Parliament, constitute the most substantial and controversial overhaul of Canada’s national security landscape since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The weeks to come will see much debate about the human rights consequences of CSIS’ unprecedented new powers to act to reduce security threats and to apply for Federal Court warrants authorizing Charter violations as part of that process. 

There will be discussion of the vagueness of the new criminal offence of advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general and the certainty that this will both intrude on and chill free expression in the country. 

by Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. This article was orginally published in Slaw, Canada's online legal magazine. Human rights violations are always most likely to occur when no one is watching over the police, soldiers and guards who have the power and potential to commit abuses. That is certainly even more the case when secrecy is prevalent; which obviously describes the world of national security investigations and operations. That is why human rights organizations, experts and bodies – national and international – have long stressed that effective review and oversight must be central to the imperative of ensuring that human rights protection is not sacrificed in any country’s rush to uphold national security.

An Amnesty International UK Release

“We will now appeal to Strasbourg, who might not be as inclined to put their trust in the UK government given what we know so far.”- Rachel Logan

The tribunal which oversees the practices of the UK secret services today ruled that the law governing the UK’s communications surveillance practices complies with the Human Rights Act, in what Amnesty International said was a ‘disappointing if unsurprising’ ruling which will now be appealed in Strasbourg.

The decision by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) is part of a legal challenge against the UK intelligence agencies brought by Amnesty International, Privacy International, Liberty and others following revelations by US whistleblower Edward Snowden. It says that there are sufficient clear limits in law and sufficient oversight of the government’s surveillance practices to satisfy its human rights obligations.

By Omar Khadr, former Guatanamo Bay detainee

Ten years ago the Canadian government established a judicial inquiry into the case of Maher Arar. That inquiry, over the course of more than two years of ground-breaking work, examined how Canada’s post-Sept. 11 security practices led to serious human rights violations, including torture.

At that same time, 10 years ago and far away from a Canadian hearing room, I was mired in a nightmare of injustice, insidiously linked to national security. I have not yet escaped from that nightmare.

As Canada once again grapples with concerns about terrorism, my experience stands as a cautionary reminder. Security laws and practices that are excessive, misguided or tainted by prejudice can have a devastating human toll.

A conference Wednesday in Ottawa, convened by Amnesty International, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and the University of Ottawa, will reflect on these past 10 years of national security and human rights. I will be watching, hoping that an avenue opens to leave my decade of injustice behind.