More than 500 of the world’s top writers have banded together to condemn the scale of government surveillance around the globe, The Guardian reports. The signatories, including five Nobel Prize winners and authors from 81 different nations, are urging the United Nations to create an international, digital bill of rights. The move comes just a day after eight of the globe’s largest tech companies called for limits to state surveillance. The recent revelations about the extent to which governments spy on individuals has undermined the human right to “remain unobserved and unmolested … This human right has been rendered null and void through abuse of technological developments by states and corporations for mass surveillance purposes,” the statement says. “A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy,” it adds.
Full Story