<story><title>Privacy Is a Human Right</title><url>https://blog.torproject.org/privacy-is-a-human-right</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marginalia_nu</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m just gonna play the devil&amp;#x27;s advocate here for a moment, because I do think there is an interesting discussion to have.&lt;p&gt;The argument seems to be that we have rights because the UN says so. Who or what endowed the UN (or anyone else) with the prerogative to declare human rights?&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s imagine a that the UN would change its mind and declares the right to eternal salvation, and mandates that every state submit to the authority of the holy see.&lt;p&gt;If the current rights are &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; human rights, and the right to salvation is a &amp;quot;false&amp;quot; human right, what sets them apart given that the UN in this hypothetical scenario declares them both? How do rights become true or false?</text></item><item><author>pulse7</author><text>&amp;quot;No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.&amp;quot; (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12)&lt;p&gt;NOTE: Emails are correspondence and we all know, that our emails are shared with governments...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ratww</author><text>Some of the premises in your post are incorrect.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The argument seems to be that we have rights because the UN says so.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not the argument. The reasons we have human rights is because individual countries decided to implement them.&lt;p&gt;The Universal Declaration itself is not legally binding. It&amp;#x27;s just an agreement that participating countries decided to implement into their own laws.&lt;p&gt;UN can&amp;#x27;t force countries who didn&amp;#x27;t vote into it to implement. They can&amp;#x27;t even force countries who actually &lt;i&gt;voted&lt;/i&gt; for it to implement it.&lt;p&gt;However, individual countries have the freedom to complain or stop trading with countries who don&amp;#x27;t implement, or on countries that implement but don&amp;#x27;t follow. Out of the things that countries do to each other, this seems like a minor thing.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Who or what endowed the UN (or anyone else) with the prerogative to declare human rights?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nobody.&lt;p&gt;Anyone can declare human rights. I&amp;#x27;ve declared a few myself yesterday during tea time.&lt;p&gt;The Universal Declaration carries its weight because it was made and approved by the countries themselves who took part in the UN at a certain time. It&amp;#x27;s not as if some crazy person at the UN has the power to change something in the document at their will. And even if they did, so what?</text></comment>
<story><title>Privacy Is a Human Right</title><url>https://blog.torproject.org/privacy-is-a-human-right</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marginalia_nu</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m just gonna play the devil&amp;#x27;s advocate here for a moment, because I do think there is an interesting discussion to have.&lt;p&gt;The argument seems to be that we have rights because the UN says so. Who or what endowed the UN (or anyone else) with the prerogative to declare human rights?&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s imagine a that the UN would change its mind and declares the right to eternal salvation, and mandates that every state submit to the authority of the holy see.&lt;p&gt;If the current rights are &amp;quot;true&amp;quot; human rights, and the right to salvation is a &amp;quot;false&amp;quot; human right, what sets them apart given that the UN in this hypothetical scenario declares them both? How do rights become true or false?</text></item><item><author>pulse7</author><text>&amp;quot;No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.&amp;quot; (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12)&lt;p&gt;NOTE: Emails are correspondence and we all know, that our emails are shared with governments...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toxik</author><text>I think this is an extremely reductionist view of the UN. The UN was not formed in a vacuum, it was formed in the wake of two consecutive world wars in order to solve international disputes amicably.&lt;p&gt;The UN declaration holds power precisely because it is a declaration, members agree on it.</text></comment>