So in response to Snowden hysteria, Germany and other EU states are mounting an ill-advised re-opening of the language on free speech and privacy long contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
They are doing this in the form of a General Resolution that merely calls for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to issue a report to be discussed at another session of the General Assembly so it isn't the amendment of a treaty or even a general comment on the treaty jurisprudence -- yet -- but it still is a dangerous and slippy road.
Precisely for that reason, and because the Snowden claims really have not been impartially validated by any credible body or litigated successfully anywhere, the US has fended this off several times since the Snowden story broke. Germany seemed to see reason, but now since claims have surfaced based on Snowden's stolen files -- not proven -- that Merkel's phone was tapped, they are back at it again.
Here's the draft text obtained by Foreign Policy.
Now, be careful what you wish for.
Opening up for re-negotiation of language like this related to this long-controversial treaty honoured more in the breach than in letter or spirit by some countries like Russia, Iran, China, Pakistan, Sudan, and Cuba is a bad idea because it enables enemies of free speech to come in the door and undo the hard-won progress of decades.
Waiting in the wings with great glee is the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), or the Arab League, which has been trying to undo freedom of speech for years, in the Third Committee of the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The OIC calls for a notion of "defamation of religion," i.e. criticism of theocratic states like their own, and seeks to punish such "defamation" -- which is essentially a blasphemy law. The US worked long and hard in co-sponsoring a resolution on these issues with Egypt which held back some of these attempts -- indeed, if the US had used this language in statements at the time of the hate film in Cairo and Benghazi, there would have been a lot more clarity (instead, they catered to Islamists, as Obama also did in his UN speech at the time).
Basically, the that HRC resolution called for recognizing a principle of hate speech prosecution only in cases when there was "incitement of imminent violence," i.e. the Supreme Court test also recognized by other countries. So general speech, even if insulting, would not be prosecuted if it did not call for immediate violence acts (and that doesn't mean speech that insults someone and then they get violent, as happened with the hate film at the time.)
The OIC is pushing this forward and now also introducing notions of "the rights of the family," i.e. family values to also attract other conservatives.
The countries that really put surveillance on religious and political dissidents and minorities are of course Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Cuba and all the other "like-minded" as they call themselves (they are dubbed "the bad-minded" by NGOs).
Led by Russia, they've all been working hard lately to undo the effectiveness of the treaty bodies that examine compliance with these UN rights covenants in a variety of ways, attacking their independence and their cooperation with NGOs.
So now Germany is simply playing to this choir.
Once you open up hard-set treaty language like this to new negotations directed politically at the US, as UN states supportive of human rights surely know, you let in the flood gates of a lot of other killer amendments. To gain the support of the OIC -- which isn't going to like language curbing surveillance of course! -- the EU may make some compromises and let in some of this "Islamophobia" stuff which is antithetical to free speech and legitimate criticism of oppressive theocratic states and Islamist terrorist groups. Or it may not in this resolution, but it will have to them compromise somewhere else with these countires in the endless horse-trading that goes on at the UN.
And then of course you may get "family values" conservative notions and suppression of press freedom in the interests of some "better world" and all the rest. This is the UN. The UN is all about the bad-minded constanlty making bad-faith efforts to pretend to be about human rights even as they kill them off. Germany should know better, but it is so blinded by leftwing anti-Americanism right now it is willing to risk teaming up with Russia and China to savage America. Let's hope America will be there when they need it for other things (migrants).
The text is also filled with problems, starting with PP7, "Noting that while concerns about national security and criminal activity may justify the gathering and protection of certain sensitive information...." Er, "may"? Why? DOES should be the word here, because concerns are legitimate and prosecution of criminal activity including terrorism is legitimate.
With good reason, in these freedom of expression covenants there is language about "except for such limitations as are necessary to maintain public order and safety in a democratic society". This bit was added in decades ago by the Western countries to ensure that the Soviet Union and other bad-faithed actors didn't use the notion that restraints were allowed on free speech for illegitimate purposes of suppressing dissent.
Now Germany is re-opening all this and subjecting it to the same manipulation by the bad-minded.
There is also reiteration and recapitulation of rights that already exist; indeed, if you were really serious about concerns about the NSA, you would have already plenty of language to use in the ICCPR and the later resolution on the Internet at the HRC, which notes that offline rights apply online, to submit any cases or concerns about the Snowden relevations.
Indeed, if the Soros crowd -- who sponsored Frank La Rue, the special rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, and helped him draft a lot of the language of his reports which you now see migrating into this draft resolution -- were really sincere about this and not just politicking, they'd submit a case re: the Snowden claims, say, on collection of phone metadata or the tapping of EU leaders' phone calls, to the Human Rights Committee. I suspect there it would wither for lack of substantiated documentation, even with some members there ready with great zeal to try to push it through.
Precisely because they can't make their case the normal way -- they don't have a case, and the ACLU lost in law-faring on this issue already in the US courts -- they've re-opened negotiating the entire treaty language with these proposed amendments.
If/when it passes, like so many other bad-faithed efforts at the UN (like the "right to housing" used against Israel), it will be directed only against the US -- like the High Commissioner for Human Rights' recent speech which harangued the US on surveillance without any reference to Russia, which has added only more and more features to its SORM surveillance that dwarfs what the US does, without any of the checks and balances.
Perhaps people in Washington think that the UN doesn't matter, and they can let Germany vent its spleen here, and let the whole Soros-funded gang and Frank La Rue have their way in a place where it doesn't count. I'm sure that's the sort of thinking you're getting from the cynics in the White House and State.
But the UN does matter as it bleeds out into many other venues, and and this resolution then migrates to the ITU and IGF venues and helps the bad actors take over the Internet and kick out the US.
As I said, be careful what you wish for...
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