Amnesty calls for ban on mass surveillance

Amnesty is taking legal action against the US and UK governments, challenging “the lawfulness of their indiscriminate mass surveillance programs”.

The human rights campaigning group will head to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on Friday because, it says, "every legal avenue in the UK has been exhausted".

Amnesty's announcement coincides with the results of a large-scale surveillance poll of 15,000 people from 13 countries and the launch of its global campaign #UnfollowMe.

According to Amnesty, its survey shows there is strong global opposition to the US monitoring internet and mobile phone use  with 71 percent of respondents saying they were strongly opposed to surveillance.

In Britain, 63 percent of respondents were opposed to US surveillance of UK internet and mobile phone use, with 21 percent of people in favor. The strongest opposition to the US intercepting, storing and analyzing personal data came from Brazil (80 percent against) and Germany (81 percent).

In Britain, 44 percent said they thought the UK government should not be carrying out mass surveillance versus 36 percent in favor.

Kate Allen, Amnesty UK director, said: "This highlights the need for a properly-informed debate here in the UK about privacy rights and legitimate security concerns. Instead of open debate, we have seen legislation rushed through without normal parliamentary scrutiny, secret court hearings and absolutely no proper independent oversight to hold the spies to account".

"Nobody disputes the necessity of properly-targeted surveillance, but the government must not ride roughshod over the rights of the very people they’re supposed to protect".

Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s secretary general, added: "President Obama should heed the voice of people around the world and stop using the internet as a tool for collecting mass data about peoples’ private lives. Today’s technology gives government’s unprecedented power to watch what we do on the internet. We need independent scrutiny to watch the watchers so that power is not abused".

The #UnfollowMe campaign urges governments to make efforts in supervision and transparency around mass surveillance.

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