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US Working To Kill UN Privacy Resolutions
schwit1 writes with a short excerpt from The Cable "The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable. American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network."
A leaked memo containing U.S. suggestions for changes to the ICCPR includes gems like (referring to intercepting communications) "Move 'may threaten' from before 'the foundations of a democratic [society]...' to before 'freedom of expression.' We need to clarify that privacy violations could 'interfere with' freedom of expression and avoid the inaccurate suggestion that all privacy violations are violations of freedom of expression." The U.S. changes are pretty much directed at making dragnet surveillance of non-citizens technically legal.
UN isn't a governing body. It's a collection of diplomats from around the globe.
What could happen is US getting pushed out of certain diplomatic circles, causing decline in its ability to leverage its influence over issues important to it. The loss is not the type that is easily evident to average citizen - but consequences of that loss usually are, as they can be for example about a US company not getting deals it needs to get or losing bids or even getting its property nationalized abroad, things like that. Diplomatic pressure is one of the main ways of ensuring that your national interests are taken into account abroad. Losing ability to apply it can be crippling in certain scenarios, or force you to take a much less efficient, and less functional means of accomplishing the same task.
Then there's the general aspect of know-who. A lot of things are done on upper level though people who know people. When you're cut out of certain aspects of diplomacy, this particular resource dwindles fast.
When Kerry signed the Small Arms treaty, it was innocuous in itself. However, it did have a clause which allows UN troops to operate on US soil independent of the Army and police forces.
No it doesn't. UN troops can't deploy *anywhere* without the Security councils approval, and *any* decision of the security council can be vetoed by the united states. It literally has no power to deploy anywhere without the unanimous approval of the United States, China, Russia, France and England. If any one of those countries say "No", it can not happen.
The UN is just a group of representitives from each country. It has no powers beyond what those countries wish it to have. its not a government, and it has very limited powers beyond what its members give it. If it ever deployed forces into the united states to abduct or kill someone, chances are those forces would be arrested, imprisoned and perhaps even executed as a hostile foreign power. And it would not be the UN, either. That power has never existed for the UN and the US is sufficiently stand-offish with the body that it would never agree to it. And without the agreement of the US, it will never happen.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
No. But it's a good reason for other countries, or groups thereof, to establish their own root servers.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.