Reconciling Human Rights With Ubiquitous Online Surveillance

Max_W writes "Here is the text of Article #12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: '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.' U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said yesterday 'While concerns about national security and criminal activity may justify the exceptional and narrowly-tailored use of surveillance programs, surveillance without adequate safeguards to protect the right to privacy actually risks impacting negatively on the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.' Is it realistic to expect the compliance with this article from the world's major players in the age of large storage disks, fast networks and computers? Or are we entering a new brave world, a new phase of human civilization, where quaint notions of privacy and traditional moral principles are becoming ridiculous? Then what to do with the Article #12? Shall it be 'intentionally left blank'? Shall it be updated to a new wording? What words could they be?" In the U.S. and the EU, government bodies are fond of coming up with domain-specific bills of rights, not so big on publicly striking out the various guarantees.

Comments

Two way street

[fustakrakich]

They want to make our lives transparent. We have to do the same to theirs. The state must live by the same rules as its subjects.

Re:Two way street

[JesseMcDonald]

The state must live by the same rules as its subjects.

Not that I'm disagreeing in any way, but if the state actually lived by the same rules as its subjects, there would be no state.

Re:Two way street

[Seumas]

Yeah . . . No. I don't think the solution is to stab everyone in the eye so we're *all* blind. What we have to do is fight the invasion of privacy and blackmail.

Also, what the fuck is up with all of these assholes talking about how we have to focus on properly balancing surveillance and privacy with the need for security? That's the most utterly bullshit line I've been hearing from people (especially the president) during the last few months. There are no concessions to be made. Yes, some times bad shit will still happen. That doesn't justify just wiping out everything that society (at least American society and government) is supposedly founded on. Sacrificing your principals to protect your principals is fucking asinine. Further, the president keeps spewing this bullshit about how his "number one job" is to "protect the american people" and "keep the country safe". The FUCK it is.

Presidential oath of office:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

His sole job is to preserve (not change) and protect and defend the Constitution. Period. Not to change it. Not to violate it. Not to push programs that spit in the face of it. . . . but to uphold it.

Yet, I have never seen or heard one reporter or one talking head anywhere under any circumstances raise this in response to the bullshit he spews.

Re:Two way street

[icebike]

No Government = Tyranny as well.

A situation of "No Government" can not exist, except perhaps in the plant world.

Whether its hives of ants, packs of wild animals, or bands of humans, some form of organization and regulation will come into being.

Because there is no other way on this planet. We have not evolved, and probably never will, to a state where there need never be some form of government if for no other reason than to manage infrastructure and to keep people from being at the total mercy of the biggest bully.

My point is that One World Government is a horrible idea. Alternatives are good. Being able to vote with your feet is the last refuge.
But as horrible as that might be, no government is worse. Even anarchists appeal to the law when their lives are threatened.

Re:Two way street

[meta-monkey]

Well gee, "no government" seems to be a bad idea, and "total government" seems to be a bad idea, I wonder if there might be something in the middle?

Perhaps, I don't know, a constitutional republic that exists to provide for the common defense, the peaceful mediation of disputes, and holds only limited and specifically enumerated powers derived from the consent of the governed such that it may not infringe upon the unalienable rights of the people?

I know, crazy talk. Let's go back to flailing widely between equally intolerable extremes.

Re:Two way street

[Sabriel]

I had modded up the post you replied to. I was going to mod you up as well. I feel that both of you have a point. Then I re-read one line in particular:

"If Americans are ever asked to give up voting and elections, or freedom on speech or religion, or many others, you will know that things have gone too far."

Your voting laws deny universal adult suffrage and your elections are rigged (or at very least involve such incompetence as to be difficult to distinguish from malice). You have "free speech zones" and systemic electronic surveillance of the population. You have people being deprived of their effects, properties and liberties without due and Constitutional process of law, you have government officials publicly committing felonies without being charged, never mind tried, and you have a higher rate of civilian incarceration than China and Russia combined.

Things have gone too far. Not ammo box far, not yet, but your soap, ballot, jury and moving boxes are all partially compromised. Yes, "cold fjord", you are correct that the President has not one but two primary mission objectives. However, "Seumas" is correct that the President is failing in one of them, and I would argue, per your statement, that he is failing in both:

"he is responsible for seeing that the law is carried out, and that the government functions"

The President needs to clean house. If you think I'm being overly dramatic, the US is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I'm in that room, there's no exits, and I've seen what happens to those who upset the gorilla. They're fugitives or dead, and their neighbours are often "acceptable collateral damage". The consequences should the gorilla turn rabid, of that last box being opened, that ordinary people are even discussing opening that last box, should be on the minds of everyone.

As an emigrant from the old USSR once posted (paraphrased): people rarely think about freedom when they have it.

Ah, Utopia!

[some old guy]

Poor Timothy and Max seem to remain under the illusion that governments, any governments, really rule and act based on their bodies of laws.

Governments have always, and always will, do as they damned well please till the next revolution. Then guess what? In no time the new boss is the same as the old boss.

Why? Easy: money. Pure and simple. Just money. Power is a means to acquire and control wealth.

Universal Declarations and Bills of Rights don't amount to jack diddly fuck if the wrong well-heeled toe gets stepped on.

only solution: take back the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to work towards making it technically infeasible to achieve the present level of surveillance. Strong end-to-end encryption needs to be ubiquitous. Real end to end, not via some intermediate web-based key holder. Emails, instant messages, and texts should be encrypted by default, no cleartext ever sent. Ideally, some onion-router way to hide origin and destination from the man in the middle should also be default, but I'm not sure how to make that work.

We need to make 1984 harder for the fuckers. Right now, there's nobody fighting back, so they win by default.

We must choose.

[Let's All Be Chinese]

We're full of "universal" rights and whatnot... but fail to live up to them. Or rather, our politicians. The bureaucrats... play their little games. Or not so little, as the case may be.

If we don't want them to run rampant, we as the world's peoples need to take a stance. Do we want ubiquitous surveillance? Then do nothing. Do we want to have something of a private live left? Well, there's work to do. And some very unpalatable questions to find suitable answers to.

Our technology is so powerful that "because we can" is no longer a valid reason. We must choose what we want our technology to do. And to choose, we must understand the consequences of what our technology can do, and what it means to willingly forego some or all of the things it might have done. In extreme cases you can even portray this as trading saved lives, caught terrorists, convicted child pornographers, agains having some privacy left.

And so we must come up with answers to questions like, how many lives is privacy for all worth? How many abducted little girls may be allowed to die for not having to justify every step you take? Because, again, that is how the snoopers will portray it. And so we must answer, or find more reasonable ways to frame the same question. That, or lose the fight before it started. In a sense, we already lost while we were ignorant and we must now claw back what was once rightfully ours. From the jaws of those who claim to protect us (from privacy and liberty, but I digress). How much is it worth to you?

Re:Just start killing all the fucks

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps if you Americans quit spying on everyone, quit torturing by redefining the words and moving to offshore bases in order to skirt the law, stop persecuting your own citizens who expose your sickening ethics, killing poor villagers in far off lands by remote control, and the list goes on, and on and on.
then maybe, just maybe Slashdots international readers wouldnt treat this place as a cesspool of hate to vent at you

right now the world is pissed with you and we learnt from 9/11 going down that path doesnt do anyone any good.
vote the bastards out and start prosecuting some of your millionaire "representatives" for their actions.
vote them back in and you will be held complicit in their crimes, simples really, start playing the nice guys.

Re:Limitations of technology, not ethics

[meta-monkey]

Exactly. Technology has nothing to do with this.

You're not secure in your home because your door is unkickdownable. Pretty sure doors have been kicked down since the invention of doors and kicking.

You're not free to say what you want because tyrants have never figured out a way to shut people up. "Grrrrrrr those filthy peasants! If only there were a way to make them silent, like a sharp object you could poke them with until they were quiet or dead! Alas, no such 'pointy stick technology' exists, so I will have to suffer their insults instead."

You have unalienable right to not have these things happen to you, which is why we consent to be governed only in way that does not infringe upon these rights. Hell, we can't even consent to be deprived of our rights. That's what "unalienable" means.

This is entirely a political problem, and is neither caused by nor solvable with technology.

Re:Limitations of technology, not ethics

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Technology has nothing to do with this.

You're not secure in your home because your door is unkickdownable. Pretty sure doors have been kicked down since the invention of doors and kicking.

You're not free to say what you want because tyrants have never figured out a way to shut people up. "Grrrrrrr those filthy peasants! If only there were a way to make them silent, like a sharp object you could poke them with until they were quiet or dead! Alas, no such 'pointy stick technology' exists, so I will have to suffer their insults instead."

You have unalienable right to not have these things happen to you, which is why we consent to be governed only in way that does not infringe upon these rights. Hell, we can't even consent to be deprived of our rights. That's what "unalienable" means.

This is entirely a political problem, and is neither caused by nor solvable with technology.

That is why anonymity is so important. While a tyrant has the power to burn down the whole village because an anonymous person who might be from there insulted him he can only do that so many times before one of the members of his royal guard assassinates him in revenge for killing his cousin who was a villager.

Anonymity is the way to embarrass, or even harm, people who have power over you without repercussion. It is the great equalizer and that is why governments everywhere are working so hard to get rid of it.

Safeguards to protect privacy

[Macman408]

The UN chief says that appropriate safeguards are needed to protect privacy - well they WERE doing a great job......until Snowden came around.

Think about it - what better way to protect your privacy than by not even telling you that they're invading it? If neither you nor anybody else in the public knows that your privacy has been violated, then obviously it hasn't been, because it's being kept private!

Then Edward Snowden came along and ruined the whole thing - simply knowing that our privacy has been violated means that it IS being violated. If it weren't for him, all our data would still be safely kept private (in the hands of the NSA).