What’s the connection between government surveillance and the ability of citizens to exercise their right to free expression?
The right to free expression means that the state should protect the communication and expression of all individuals in this territory, including the right to privacy. This is a different right but in a way intimately connected to freedom of expression because it enhances freedom of expression, facilitates it, and gives security for people to communicate freely.
The problem with state surveillance is that in general it’s an intimidating factor which inhibits freedom of expression. More specifically, in authoritarian regimes or at critical moments it can also lend itself to forms of direct censorship or even political persecution.
–excerpted from an interview by Wendy M. Grossman & Becky Hogge with Frank La Rue, whose UN report on State Communication Surveillance was released just as the PRISM scandal broke
