FSMUN

United Nations Human Rights Council

The Issue of Data Privacy & National Security

Chairperson: Prachet Sinha

Vice-Chairperson: Arham Shah

Letter From The Chair

Hey Delegates!
I’m Prachet Sinha, the chairperson for the UNHRC committee at FSMUN 8.0,
HRC is often regarded as an easy or non-technical committee at MUNs, and I
couldn’t disagree more, just because the topics discussed often don’t include
warfare or military action doesn’t mean that it can’t be a vessel for deep and
rich debate, diplomacy and arguments.
And our current agenda is a great example of this phenomenon. An agenda
discussing data privacy laws may seem monotonous, or shallow at first but I
assure you that this committee will be incredibly lively, as well as action-packed,
as long as the delegates are well-versed with the topic, and their policies.
I hope that the resources in this study guide help you better prepare for the
committee and the Executive Board is here to help, you’ll find my email ID at
the end of this study guide if you require any help.

- Prachet Sinha
Intro To The Agenda:

The issue of prioritising national security over the right to privacy has been one
that has been discussed at length the world over. Does a threat to national
security warrant a country to have unprecedented access to their citizens’ lives?
Or does a fundamental human right take priority over a potential threat? These
are the fundamental questions we wish to answer with the discussions to be
made in this committee, we’ve seen many historical instances where a country
has controlled variety of facets of their citizens’ lives under the guise of national
security, but do those arguments hold weight under scrutiny enacted by other
nations as their equals?

In the new generation of surveillance and increased threats to national security,

a more prominent discussion is one of data privacy, especially online data, with
more and more governments using social media and the massive data metrics it
creates to track the movements, ideals and even the alignment of their citizens,
the motivation to protect the peoples’ fundamental right to privacy, even online
has grown to that of paramount importance

The delegates are highly encouraged to look into their country’s privacy laws
and surveillance laws, in order to gain a good understanding of the highly
nuanced stances most nations hold on this topic, and I would like to remind the
delegates that your nation’s own policy may even take precedence over your
foreign policy in agenda’s such as this one.
Important Definitions:

Privacy:
recognizes that each person has a sphere of existence and activity that properly
belongs to that individual alone, where he or she should be free of constraint,
coercion, and even uninvited observation.

Data Privacy:
Data privacy, or information privacy, often refers to a specific kind of privacy
linked to personal information (however that may be defined) that is provided
to private actors in a variety of different contexts.

National Security:
National security or national defence is the security and defence of a nation
state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a
duty of government.

Mass Surveillance:
Mass surveillance can subject a population or significant component thereof to
indiscriminate monitoring, involving a systematic interference with people’s
right to privacy and all the rights that privacy enables, including the freedom to
express yourself and to protest.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family,
home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or
attacks.
Origins Of The Right To Privacy
Privacy has existed as a concept in human culture for centuries, with references
to the offence of intrusion into someone’s home being seen the Codes of
Hammurabi, one of the longest, most well-preserved, and oldest legal texts in
history, as well as references to the same offense in Roman Law.

Privacy comes from the human desire to separate self and society, to make a
distinction between what is theirs and what they share with the outside world.

In the modern age, Warren and Brandeis’ “The Right to Privacy” from the
Harvard Law Review in 1890 stand as the most well-remembered references in
support of a fundamental right to privacy, or “the right to be left alone,” even at
that time the writer’s noted the threat to privacy posed by technological
advancements such as Instant Photography and News.

In the second half of the 20th century, more legal references to the right to
privacy being a fundamental right showed up in national legislations, to put the
protection of these rights into law.

International frameworks that set the right to privacy into stone include Article
12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948), Article
17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (United Nations,
1966), Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (Council of
Europe, 1950) and Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the
European Union (2000). Thes state undoubtedly that the right to privacy is a
fundamental human right and that it must be protected in national legislations
as well.

Key Events/Stakeholders:

The Patriot Act

The USA Patriot Act deters and punishes terrorist attacks in the United States
and abroad through enhanced law enforcement and strengthened money
laundering prevention. It also allows the use of investigative tools designed for
organized crime and drug trafficking prevention for terrorism investigations.
The World’s First Data Protection Legislation
The German state of Hessia enacted the world's first data protection legislation
in 1970. In Germany the term informational self-determination was first used in
the context of a German constitutional ruling relating to personal information
collected during the 1983 census.

The Data Act (Swedish: Datalangen)

The world's first national data protection law was enacted in Sweden on 11 May
1973. It went into effect on 1 July 1974 and required licenses by the Swedish
Data Protection Authority for information systems handling personal data.

The Great Firewall

The combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the
People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in
internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and
to slow down cross-border internet traffic. The effect includes: limiting access to
foreign information sources, blocking foreign internet tools (e.g. Google
Search,Facebook,Twitter, Wikipedia, and others) and mobile apps, and requiring
foreign companies to adapt to domestic regulations.

Pegasus
Spyware developed by the Israeli cyberarms firm NSO Group that can be
covertly installed on mobile phones running most versions of iOS and Android.
The 2021 Project Pegasus revelations suggest that the current Pegasus software
can exploit all recent iOS versions up to iOS 14.6. As of 2016, Pegasus was
capable of reading text messages, tracking calls, collecting passwords, location
tracking, accessing the target device's microphone and camera, and harvesting
information from apps. The spyware is named after Pegasus, the winged horse
of Greek mythology. It is a Trojan horse computer virus that can be sent "flying
through the air" to infect cell phones.

National Security Agency (NSA)

A national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense,
under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is
responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and
data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes,
specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is
also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and
information systems. The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its
mission, the majority of which are clandestine. The existence of the NSA was
not revealed until 1975.

The NATGRID
The integrated intelligence master database structure for counter-terrorism
purpose connecting databases of various core security agencies under
Government of India collecting comprehensive patterns procured from 21
different organizations that can be readily accessed by security agencies round
the clock. The 26/11 attacks on Mumbai led to the exposure of several
weaknesses in India's intelligence gathering and action networks. NATGRID is
part of the radical overhaul of the security and intelligence apparatuses of India
that was mooted by the then Home Minister P. Chidambaram in 2009. The
National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the National Counter Terrorism Centre
(NCTC) are two organisations established in the aftermath of the Mumbai
attacks of 2008.

Useful Resources:
- Intelligence.gov: Privacy, Technology & National Security
- United Nations: Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- United Nations: The United Nations Charter
- Human Rights Media: Right to Privacy
- Privacy International: What Is Privacy?
- i-Sight: A Practical Guide To Data Privacy Laws By Country
- UNCTAD: Data Protection & Privacy Legislation Worldwide
- Privacy International: United Nations Recognition of Privacy
- UN OHCHR: The right to privacy in the digital age, Report 2020

Contact The Chairperson

Contact The Co-Chair