
UN Committee Approves Text Titled ‘Right to Privacy in the Digital Age’ - salient
https://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2013/gashc4094.doc.htm
======
SilasX
In other news, the 4th amendment doesn't cover internet communications because
"there's no social consensus on an expectation of privacy" there.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803409)

~~~
rayiner
Good job taking my post out of context. That post was in a sub thread about a
broad general right to privacy. Not just narrow protections of electronic
communications, but all sorts of tracking that doesn't qualify as a search or
seizure. No such right exists. The Constitution doesn't even say the word
privacy, nor did the framers write about it in the federalist papers or
contemporaneous writings.

My post was about what it would take for the Supreme Court to conjure such a
broad right to privacy out of thin air. What it would take is a broad social
consensus that such a right should exist. My point was that the tech community
is undermining the establishment of that consensus by conditioning people to
see online communications as a commercial transaction that can be data mined
for advertising and tracking.

~~~
SilasX
What specifically did I misrepresent? Can you fit it into this format:

SilasX's post suggested this about rayiner's post: [ ]

But, upon reading the full context of rayiner's post, that would be a
misrepresentation because: [ ]

As it stands, all I get out of your comment is, "Hey, you took my post out of
context. [Reiterate the post]."

Please tell me it's something more than "you made my argument seem bad".

~~~
rayiner
Your post makes it seem like my post is about Internet communications. But
that sub thread was about a general right to privacy, which is a broader
concept. You can shoehorn some elements of Internet privacy into the existing
4th amendment framework. Straightforward analogies to wire taps will get you a
long way. But there is a lot of surveillance that doesn't fit the mold of
existing 4th amendment protections, particularly those based on tracking using
third party or even public information. My post was about what it would take
for the Supreme Court to find a general right of privacy that could encompass
things that aren't obviously searches or seizures.

Obviously finding a broad right of privacy would take an act of legislating
from the bench much larger than simply extending existing wire tap protections
to Skype calls. Your post implies that I think a broad social consensus is
necessary for the latter.

~~~
SilasX
>Your post makes it seem like my post is about Internet communications.

So? It was, in part. If you're going to say someone is "misrepresenting" you
simply on the basis that you talked about more than that one thing, then no
one has every been correctly represented in the history of humanity.

Please stop crying wolf, and apologize for your baseless accusation.

------
middleclick
Canada, Israel, United Kingdom, United States voted against the motion.
Interesting.

~~~
znowi
Not much surprising, though. The US and their minions.

Full stat for a bigger picture: 148 in favor, 4 against, 27 abstained. It's
like 4 against the world.

~~~
schoen
The U.S. delegation did get the right to privacy text watered down (and argued
that there is no internationally recognized human right to privacy!), but the
text still expresses serious concerns over mass surveillance.

The 148-4 vote is not on the right to privacy, but on a different text about
the "right to development". The U.S. delegation actually voted in favor of the
right-to-privacy text.

If you search this transcript for "The Committee then", you can see that they
had many different work items considered at this meeting, not just the privacy
item.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> and argued that there is no internationally recognized human right to
> privacy!

Maybe there isn't, but maybe there should be..

[http://en.necessaryandproportionate.org/text](http://en.necessaryandproportionate.org/text)

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sebkomianos
Does UN have any power at all? When was the last time they said something that
resulted in a change somewhere?

Related: Greece: “Troika bailout conditions are undermining human rights,”
warns UN expert on debt and human rights -
[http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?Ne...](http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13281&LangID=E)

~~~
Brakenshire
The UN really has as much power as we give it, in situations like this. It
comes down to your contempt or otherwise for global consensus opinion.

But, if we're justifying the UN, as seems to be necessary by this thread, the
UNHCR and the WHO make huge differences, these are the organizations which
have been coordinating help for refugees in Syria, and efforts to completely
eradicate Polio, for instance. The Security Council is the major means for
forcing Russia, China and the West to come to a shared position on Syria,
which has led to the decommissioning of chemical weapons. It's also
instrumental to avoiding war in Iran - the non-proliferation treaty provides a
framework for negotiations, and the IAEA does the actual inspections - and
failure to reach consensus in the Council was a major reason why the war in
Iraq went so badly.

It's a bit tiring hearing the old John Bolton-esque bullshit about the UN;
it's a vital international institution, even if just for diplomacy and
discussion.

~~~
xerophtye
It's not that the UN as a whole is a bad thing. Its the perfect place for
countries to sit and talk. And they do tons for the world. But the view that
it is some sort of superior body that governs all the countries is rather...
naive. Even the security council for that matter, has had a terrible record
track. And i need not remind the absurdity of the veto rule...

------
e12e
As far as I can figure out, the actual resolution is:

[http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/C.3/68/L.4...](http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/C.3/68/L.45/Rev.1)

------
zcarter
Most of the problems arise from the existence of asymmetric information.
Consider how a blackmailer's power evaporates when the information they
possess is made public. I think the simplest and most likely outcome is that
all of the collected data will be made public.

While it would be nice to maintain the illusion of privacy, it is only that,
an illusion.

~~~
anigbrowl
_Consider how a blackmailer 's power evaporates when the information they
possess is made public._

The blackmailer's power to exploit the victim evaporates, but the victim's
situation may still deteriorate. For example, you discover that I am a former
stripper, but nowadays I teach elementary school. You contact me and threaten
me with exposure. I turn the matter over to the police. Through police
carelessness or some other unrelated cause,t he information becomes public
anyway. Your abaility to exort money in return for silence is gone, but I get
kicked out of my teaching job anyway and can't find another one, so I lose
several years of my economic life, and possibly social standing etc.

A common problem with blackmail/privacy hypotheticals is an ambiguity over the
moral culpability of the secret information. I personally don't think being a
former stripper is a moral impediment to teaching elementary school but )a
many disagree and b) I can think of many other things that I would consider a
moral impediment but not one that I could necessarily justify on objective
grounds.

~~~
zcarter
Right. I needed to define "problems." Problems at the level of society. If
everyone has access to everyone else's behavior on the internet, society would
change, yes, but I do not really believe the possibility of 'change' to be a
problem itself.

Considering your former stripper example: \- If they would be kicked out of
the job, is the former stripper not defrauding the school and the parent in
this example? Privacy in this case is helping the former stripper deceive the
(possibly overprotective) parent. Is reducing the incidence of fraud a
problem? \- people having false beliefs and biases that are shattered by new
information (possibly harmful by causing them emotional distress?) is not a
reason to prevent the discovery of that new information. Generally, I don't
think it is a problem if the reality of the world causes trauma in the form of
preventing foolish ideas from continuing. I imagine Ted Haggard's outing was
very emotionally traumatic for his parishioners. \- Relative social morals
would obviously change. Almost everyone has done something society deems weird
on the internet. Social norms around pornography, for example, will change.
The moment this happens, the parent would likely realize, everyone has done
something possibly deemed objectionable in their past. Further, the parent
would have better information about how the former stripper is currently
behaving - the best way for them to make decisions about their child now.

~~~
anigbrowl
I picked that example because it's not actually illegal to be a stripped in
many jurisdictions; while it's a stereotypically sleazy job, the sleaze factor
arguably attaches to what strippers have to put up with as much as their
activities. Thus, I'm not sure if or why parents should have an expectation of
awareness about such activity in a person's past.

To be honest, I think you're overly optimistic about people's willingness to
go with the flow of social permissiveness. Quite a lot of people are
reactionaries.

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dreamdu5t
Let's define privacy first. Does privacy mean my communications are monitored
by the NSA? Or does privacy mean Facebook has to display some message to
people who voluntarily make their private information public?

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Eye_of_Mordor
It is unfortunate that there is no UN definition of 'terrorism', since those
fighting this privacy resolution would be the biggest 'terrorist states' in
the world. Best to remove the meaningless 'countering terrorism' term
altogether and build a world based on trust, freedom and cooperation.

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nayefc
Yet another motion from a useless organisation.

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wnevets
a symbolic gesture with zero teeth, exciting.

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desireco42
I am very skeptical to anything coming from UN, they as an organization are
completely deprecated. As for this shameful bunch that voted against this, it
is just state of where they are and all of us in terms of freedom and
civilized conduct.

~~~
znowi
> they as an organization are completely deprecated

What deprecates them is countries like the US who don't give a shit about
international agreements.

~~~
nickff
There is no international agreement which requires costly action, and is
adhered to; most simply require signatories to do what they would have done
anyway. International agreements simply are a method of signaling at very low
cost.

