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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.
Wow, the US government really doesn't give a fuck. They're paranoid as shit that their little party will be over.
even if the UN passes something to assert "universal human right to online privacy", we know that the ones doing the snooping are still going to keep snooping with no regard for the law.
Land of the free to violate our own constitution. :(
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Lets take away "that" basic human right, it don't matter. In a few years, other rights would be excepted too (i.e. torture, how can be bad something as fun as waterboarding?), and if the progression continues they will be back to import cheap workforce from Africa in no time. We seen this kind of progressions becoming very popular lately.
There is no "us" if the people can't communicate. That's the real reason for surveillance, always has been and always will be: to stamp out any effective resistance before it begins. And that's also why the ability to communicate secretly is absolutely vital to keep tyranny from rising its ugly head.
Well, we all know which side of power vs. freedom America has cast its lot with...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Every tyranny is exercised by the few over the many. Your numbers don't mean much.
It is an illusion that all these other countries are "different" than the US. Citizens of the UK, Germany, France, etc.. have all found out that the US is spying on them, with full cooperation of their own agencies and corporations. What is changed and what is different after that revelation? Nothing!
They are still doing the same things, even if Merkel said "please stop spying on 'me'".
People want to believe that things are the same today in politics as they were 40 years ago, they are not. They want to believe that their Government controls their own country, but that is no longer the truth. Sure, the local governments control some things, but the economies are all from the central banks. The same owners of the central bank in the US own the banks in the Western world.
The US is playing fall guy for the surveillance, sure. But the rest of the West benefits from the surveillance as much as the US. It's control, and they want more of it.
People were warning us about this New World Order thing back in the 50s and 60s. The media quickly labelled them "crazy conspiracy theorists" and people fell for the ruse. People today still don't want to believe it. They claim that these are 'political mistakes' or that they do it for the money. Mistakes? With hundreds of people analyzing the situation, none of them are below average IQ, and every decision they happen to make is a mistake? To believe that, is a mistake.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If you think the signatories to the privacy rules really believe in them, you are smoking some awfully strong weed. No politician--NO POLITICIAN--cares about your privacy. At best those rules will be used unilaterally and when some advantage against the US can be secured through those rules.
On the flip-side, if you think the US is doing the same thing, you're right. This is politics, and you have to see both sides, not just one, through political lenses.
Agreed.
And we need to take CARE of our Whistleblowers.
Develop some thoughts on that.
Obama and his thugs hunt them -- we should provide cover,
shelter and care for them.
How -- that is the big question.
It's difficult to pin down an exact date.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Let us give thanks that the United States is going to protect us from those dirty third world countries that want to impose basic human rights of privacy on us.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
But only the US citizens let their governments spends billions of their own money on it to target them without doing a thing about it. Land of the free... not! Land of the brave, not!
Tomorrow is another day...
even if the UN passes something to assert "universal human right to online privacy", we know that the ones doing the snooping are still going to keep snooping with no regard for the law.
Sure, UN laws aren't trivial to enforce... And yes, it's hard to say to what extend a US court will acknowledge treaties signed by the US.
And hey, the US maybe not even choose to sign such a treaty.
But highlighting the problem, and making in bluntly obvious that the US is spying on people to an extend Stasi could onl y dreams of is a good start. Nothing ever changes over night, NSA wasn't built in a day, and it'll take more than day to shut it down.
But when to US makes moves like this, is bluntly obvious to the rest of the world that going forward internet cables needs to be routed around the US. That's not going to happen over night either, if ever...
i wonder how we manage to have a revolution back in the 1700's since we didn't have telephones or the internet.
There was also no system where horses and wagons had to display numbers, and those numbers could be read by automatic systems on every major trail and on most Sheriff's horses, and which were stored forever by the British administrators for later data-mining. There was no system where long-distance commercial carriages required travellers to show photo-ID, and which were stored in a database, which could also be reported to the British administrators based on a secret warrant. There was also no system which images and stored the address details of every single piece of territorial mail.
The lack of technology in the 1700's cut both ways.
There was, however, the unlimited legal power of British Regulars to stop and search anyone, for any reason. Which was why the US founders included a clearly worded right of privacy/security as part of the US Constitution to prevent that situation from ever recurring. So at least you have that advantage. Right? Right?
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
It allows treaty nations to seek redress in international courts. So it allows signatory nations to punish and/or restrict US companies (Google/Microsoft/etc) for cooperating with routine NSA/CIA monitoring in violation with the treaty, and if/when the US takes the matter to the WTO court, it allows signatories to use the treaty to justify their unilateral trade restrictions against US companies.
Since those companies cannot refuse to comply with secret warrants in the US, and they cannot refuse to comply with treaty nations' laws, their only way out of the bind is to stop operating in treaty countries. This increases the political pressure within the US against the monitoring, since those US companies (and hence their rented politicians) care more about being locked out of foreign markets than they care about teh terrists.
Put it another way, if it didn't matter, why is the US pushing so hard to change it?
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Another leaked memo reveals that the next version of the text proposed by the US contains the words "You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him, you must love him."
No left turn unstoned.
Your idea was already captured by the NATO bunch years ago.
So, the Brazilians and Germans are saying that you may spy on your own citizens to your heart's content, but you can't spy outside your own territory because that violates human rights. Sorry, but I think that's backwards. I hope the US kills this provision. I want the US government to spy on foreign nations and not spy on Americans.
Both are important. Otherwise other nations can spy on US citizens, and then just report the results to the US government. It already happens.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.