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Post-Snowden,
Emmerson Tells
ICP of
“Conceptual
Censorship,”
Foreign
Fighters Q
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
October 23 --
When UN human
rights
rapporteur Ben
Emmerson held
a press
conference
on his report
on mass
surveillance
on October 23,
Inner City
Press asked
him to review
the Obama
administration's
and its Privacy
and Civil
Liberties
Oversight
Board's
response to
the spying
revelations by
Edward Snowden
and others,
and if any
dangers are
posed by the
“foreign
fighters”
resolution
adopted by the
UN Security
Council in
September.
(The latter
question was
not answered.)
Emmerson
began
diplomatically,
calling the
PCLOB's
reports “worth
reading,” but
then said that
the debate and
proposal
legislation is
confined to
the “detailed
fringes.” He
said the key
question is
whether the
right to
privacy simply
will not apply
to the means
of
communications
most in use
today, given
government's
appetite for
surveillance.Video here and embedded below.
He
said as long
as governments
-- like that
of the United
States --
won't disclose
their
surveillance
programs, the
debate is
subject to
“conceptual
censorship.”
The UN
set aside the
first question
for the old UN
Correspondents
Association,
which asked a
softball
question
leading
Emmerson to
reply, “read
the report.”
(It has been
online for
some time, here.)
The
new Free
UN Coalition
for Access objects
to set-asides,
and to UNCA's
function as
the UN's
Censorship
Alliance,
having tried
to order Inner
City Press to
remove
factual
articles from
the Internet,
and then getting
Google to
block from its
search leaked
copies of
anti-Press
complaints
filed with the
UN, here.
We'll have
more on this.
First
Look's "The
Intercept" has
revealed
that the US
National
Security
Agency and FBI
spied on at
least five
Americans, all
Muslims, and
used
place-holder
code names
like "Raghead,"
click here for
that.
Those spied on
included a
Republican
candidate for
the Virginia
legislature,
Faisal Gill;
Hooshang
Amirahmadi, an
Iranian-American
professor;
lawyer Asim
Ghafoor; Nihad
Awad of CAIR;
and "Agha
Saeed, a
former
political
science
professor at
California
State
University who
champions
Muslim civil
liberties and
Palestinian
rights."
It's
shameful, but
who can stand
up to the
United States?
The United
Nations'
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon has
already said
he thinks
Snowden
"misused"
information,
as Inner City
Press reported
here.
Back on March
14 when the US
delegation to
the UN Human
Rights
Committee in
Geneva took
the floor, it
was a full
court press.
Of the
elephant in
the room, NSA
spying, the
speaker from
the Civil
Rights
Division of
the US
Department of
Justice used a
single line:
DOJ is
"monitoring" a
number of
private
actions. You
don't say.
The
head of the US
delegation,
Mary McLeod,
said but did
not explain
why the US
Administration
has "no
current
expectation to
become a party
to the
optional
protocol" to
the
International
Covenant on
Civil and
Political
Rights --
which the US
says does not
apply to its
actions
outside of its
borders.
The
session closed
with a slew of
questions:
Walter Kalin
asked why the
US deports
people to
Haiti even
amid the
cholera
epidemic --
for which,
Inner City
Press notes, the
US has said
the UN should
be immune.
The US
repeated that
argument on
July 7, which
Inner City
Press has
covered here. Watch
this site.
* * *
These
reports
are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click here
for Sept 26, 2011 New Yorker on Inner City
Press at UN
Click
for
BloggingHeads.tv re Libya, Sri Lanka, UN
Corruption
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
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