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UN issues call for international privacy agreement

A UN watchdog has called for a new international agreement on privacy following a review of the expanding global array of surveillance measures and databases advanced by governments in the cause of counter-terrorism. The special rapporteur on human rights, Martin Scheinin, said the UN should create a "a global declaration on …

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lglethal
Joke

My god a sensible UN declaration??

Place your bets on which of the permanent Security Council members will be the first to use their Veto on this declaration...

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Who's even listening?

Hard to dispute anything Mr Scheinin says ... but to what point? With so-called 'democratic' Western governments comprehensively ignoring many of the most basic elements of the UN Human Rights declarations, what credence are they going to give to demands for privacy? They'll pay lip service and carry on as before, using anything and everything from terrorism to paedophilia to justify comprehensive assaults on citizens' privacy. And - to be fair - much of the general public will buy it all, hook line and sinker.

Even apart from security theatre, they're already flogging off almost any govt record anyone is prepared to pay for. Or accidentally leaving it on trains and buses.

And, of course, there are already perfectly adequate provisions for privacy - for politicians at least - and that's all that really counts...

amanfromMars 1
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The Enemy within ..... Protesting Immunity from Normal Rules of Engagement

"And, of course, there are already perfectly adequate provisions for privacy - for politicians at least - and that's all that really counts..." ... John 186 Posted Wednesday 20th January 2010 15:57 GMT

It is pleasant enough to imagine the opposite being true, with their every move of Interest to Intelligence Service for ..... well Future Leverage is Attractive in a Media Puppet and Stage Whore/Rent Boy. Indeed, with so many of them Proving themselves so Admirably and Ably to be so Crooked, for them not to be Watched intently would be an Intelligence Failing.

Nowadays, Instant Communications of the Ethernet Kind are that which Drives Progress and Development and to Imagine that IT is Secure with any Adequate Provisions for Privacy is Childish and Naive and Most Entertaining and Educational. You surely cannot imagine that they who provide any Secured Privacy do not have Access to and Knowledge of whatever they are providing Secured Privacy against?

Graham Marsden
Flame

"Parliaments...

"... had generally been given little opportunity to debate such counter-terrorism powers".

Well of course they hadn't, because nobody needs to debate such powers, do they? It's because we're being attacked and it's to protect the public and we're thinking of the children and so on, so how could anyone disagree with such things? That would be unpatriotic, wouldn't it?

Hang on, why does that ring a bell? Oh yes...

"[...] the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

- Herman Goering

Barbara in Austin
WTF?

Permission to Speak...

WTF?? Can everyone please take a giant "Go Back to Yesterday" pill and stop these idiots from collecting (we do so love to collect..) personal data?? do we really need laws to counter laws that counter intelligence (that is so widely coveted!)

Umm... it wasn't so long ago that people needed passports to travel from country to country (unless you are an unstable Nigerian with exploding underwear..) and Europe said "No! We don't want to produce 'our papers' at each border, we want to live and move freely --like the Unidted States"... so border crossings were abandoned in 1980... were there ANY fewer "terrorist" activities in Israel back then?? Nope, pretty much status quo on terror.

Turn off those fucknTelevisions and start massaging your temples--- time to jump start thinking-- again!

Tom Thomson
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Re: Permission to speak

---- (quote)

it wasn't so long ago that people needed passports to travel from country to country (unless you are an unstable Nigerian with exploding underwear..) and Europe said "No! We don't want to produce 'our papers' at each border, we want to live and move freely --like the Unidted States"... so border crossings were abandoned in 1980

--- (/quote)

Nothing much happened in 1980 - borders in Western Europe (except those between anywhere else and UK or Ireland) were wide open at least as far back as the 60s - except that regulations were changed to match what had already been happening in practise for a couple of decades. I could travel between between France, Belgium, Netherlands, West Germany, Austria, Italy without any need for a passport or any form of ID in the 60s, going through manned border checkpoints where the guards didn't stop anyone, although in theory a passport was required. Yugoslav borders then required a passport in practise as well as officially on entry, probably because the Yugoslav government wasn't sure which bloc it was in, but they were the only country in mainland W Europe who actually did checks in practise (actually, I didn't try Scandinavian countries, Spain, or Greece - maybe they actually did border checks too - Spain seems quite likely; and I suppose that geographically speasking E Germany was in W Europe, but of course we called it East Europe not West because it was a communist bloc country).

With both Spain and the UK now requiring airlines to provide advance passenger information I reckon we are slightly more checked at borders now than we were in the mid-60s, not less.

John Smith 19
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China, followed by the US, followed by UK

in that order.

But thumbs up for the idea. FInally someone proposing a *global* level of basic privacy protection to counter the numerous "Data sharing" initiatives to "combat terrorism and paedophilia" blah blah.

Tom Thomson
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Re: China, followed by the US, followed by UK → #

What, you think China will beat us and the US to it? Well, beating us to vetoing less surveillance may be imaginable if the security council doesn't consider this until after the general election but I can't seeing the US failing to be first.

Anonymous Coward
Paris Hilton

Ah good. The UN.

It seems fair, reasonable and fitting at this stage for the UN to be a venue of all things global and ethical standards for such things?

For in this diminishing world of doing and traveling and information and so forth-isms there is a need for 'we the public' and we the public have no venue for our voices, fears and privacies?

I also hold to the view that such global organisations that do exist would welcome a commercial inclusion to global ethics doing, discussing and implementing as they tend to be honourable organisations anyway.

But for this to happen as happen it should it needs a global venue of influence and consequence.

The UN's unofficial remit seems to be 'to do good and to minimise the bad and where the bad is in ascendency to cater for ways of undoing badness and replace it with whole hearted, wholly agreeable goodness.

Way to go UN!

I think the UN might be surprised at what support it gets and I hope it approaches a certain Mr Gates for his chairmanship and the process of humanising global ethics.

Paris: for I am sure she need-feel the impulse for whole hearted goodness.

For a good and timely solution is good and timely and there are probably many who wish it to be so.

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