A Draft resolution

1. The Parliamentary Assembly is deeply concerned about mass surveillance practices disclosed since June 2013 by journalists to whom a former US national security insider, Mr. Edward Snowden, had entrusted a large amount of top secret

data establishing the existence of mass surveillance and large-scale intrusion practices hitherto unknown to the general public and even to most political decision-makers.

2. The information disclosed so far in the Snowden files has triggered a massive, world-wide debate about mass surveillance by the US and other countries’ intelligence services and the lack of adequate legal regulation and technical protection at the national and international level, and/or its effective enforcement.

3. The disclosures have provided compelling evidence of the existence of far-reaching, technologically advanced systems put in place by US intelligence services and their partners in certain Council of Europe member states to collect, store and analyse communication data, including content, location and other metadata, on a massive scale, as well as targeted surveillance measures encompassing numerous persons against whom there is no ground for suspicion of any wrongdoing…”

• Mass Surveillance – Part 1: Risks and opportunities raised by the current generation of network services and applications, 12-01-2015

• Mass Surveillance – Part 2: Technology foresight, options for longer term security and privacy improvements, 13-01-2015

• Mass Surveillance of IT users? European Parliamentary Research Service