A United Nations committee has passed a resolution that explicitly condemns mass online surveillance and calls for its victims to have legal redress. The UN General Assembly will vote on it in December, according to AFP.

The resolution is a modification of an earlier resolution, passed a year ago, that slammed the monitoring and collection of people’s communications. The new version makes it clear that arbitrary surveillance and/or interception of communications is still a rights violation and possibly anti-democratic “when undertaken on a mass scale.”

The resolution, which would not place binding restrictions on countries as such, also calls on the UN Human Rights Council to consider setting up a “special procedure” for protecting privacy. It was passed by the General Assembly’s Third Committee by consensus on Tuesday.

Right to remedy

The text calls for countries to “provide individuals whose right to privacy has been violated by unlawful…