The laws are “predicated on the psychology of fear,” which prevents the public from “objectively assessing the effectiveness” of privacy-busting measures, said the UN special rapporteur.

The United Nations’ special rapporteur on privacy has lambasted a spate of new surveillance laws across Europe and the US, saying that there is “little or no evidence” that mass monitoring of communications works.

In a report published this week, Prof. Joseph Cannataci, the first privacy watchdog to take up the post, said he was neither convinced of the effectiveness or the proportionality “of some of the extremely privacy-intrusive measures that have been introduced by new surveillance laws.”

The complete article is available here and here (pdf).