UN Committee Approves Text Titled ‘Right to Privacy in the Digital Age’

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.

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

> The Committee then approved, by a recorded vote of 148 in favour to 4 against ( Canada, Israel, United Kingdom, United States), with 27 abstentions, a draft resolution titled “The right to development”.

The privacy one didn't have a vote.

> The draft, approved without a vote, would have the General Assembly call upon Member States to review their procedures, practices and legislation on the surveillance of communications, their interception and collection of personal data, including mass surveillance, with a view to upholding the right to privacy by ensuring the full and effective implementation of all relevant obligations under international human rights law.

Note also the: "Human rights activists used online tools to promote human rights and should therefore be able to use them freely"

So touching.. it almost make me cry

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.

It is schoolyard justice on an international scale, same as it has always been. To parahprase my history teacher, international relations are surprisingly childish.

Blackmailers have information, which becomes valueless when it is made public; their activities have much in common with selling non-public information for the purpose of insider-trading. I do not see what this has to do with privacy.

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.

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