[wintermutestwin]

Specifically, Article 12 of the UDHR states:

"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."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...

Why isn't this Article at the forefront of any and all conversation re: privacy?

[rsj_hn]

UDHR is not a binding law, it is a "declaration". An aspirational statement of common understanding made by bureaucrats in a big conference in 1948, and is one of many such "declarations". Thus trying to cite a certain passage of this 70 year old declaration as if it had legal force today in any country on earth is a pretty odd thing to do. A declaration isn't even a treaty, and of course a treaty needs to be ratified to be in effect. So not only has the UNDR not been ratified by anyone, it can't be ratified as it is not even a treaty to begin with.

Now some nations may have decide to take some of the principles in this declaration and turn them into laws. But you will find that there is great variance in the human rights laws today even between, say, Canada and the U.S., or Mexico and Japan.

The fact of the matter is human rights are a social construct and they very much differ on what society your are in and what that society has decided are the rights it will observe. Looking around, we find very different definitions and intepretations of rights all around the world.

[M2Ys4U]

Additionally Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights[0]

>Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

>There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."

and Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union[1]

>Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.

and

>1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.

>2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.

>3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority.

Both of these documents are legally binding (the former on all member states of the Council of Europe,[2] and the latter on the EU and its member states)

[0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/European_Convention_for_the_P...

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Europe

[quotemstr]

Who defines what "privacy" means? You? Why? Can you point me to the place where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights talks about cookies and FLoC? The UCHR is not a blank check for banning anything you want in the name of "privacy".

There are a lot of angry people in this thread stating what they want, but none have offered an argument for why we should structure society around their whims. Sorry, but "you shouldn't be able to collect information" isn't an argument. It's a wish. Nobody is under any obligation to indulge the wishes of random strangers.

[duckmysick]

There's nothing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights about privacy regarding medical records, but various jurisdictions agree that it's worth protecting.

> Sorry, but "you shouldn't be able to collect information" isn't an argument.

How about "private entities shouldn't be able to collect my information without my explicit consent".

> It's a wish. Nobody is under any obligation to indulge the wishes of random strangers.

Yours included.

[freediver]

> How about "private entities shouldn't be able to collect my information without my explicit consent".

If the information is public, no consent is needed.

Privacy is about trusting someone with private information and expecting they will not do anything with it that you would not approve of.

[quotemstr]

> How about "private entities shouldn't be able to collect my information without my explicit consent"

Keeping a diary or a phone contact list would be forbidden under a strict reading of that rule. Even remembering the name of a person you met at a party would be forbidden unless you ask for explicit consent first. "Hey, Joe. Great to meet you. Mind if I make a mental note connecting your face to your name?" Real people don't think like this.

We all have a natural freedom to record facts we perceive in the world around them. Taken to its logical conclusion, privacy advocacy is about mandatory forgetting. No, thanks.

[imiric]

The issue is not with individuals keeping track of relationships and their contact lists. It's with how that information is further used, shared and sold. I wouldn't be pleased if a friend whom I trusted with my contact information shared it with others without my consent, and I would be very displeased if it ended up on Facebook[1].

PII is very valuable to advertisers (or to adtech as I recently learned[2]) as it allows them to target individuals based on interest. Beyond the fact that I don't enjoy being forced into complicitness to being manipulated into purchasing a product, I strongly object to having a profile in some mega-corp's database that has my personal information I didn't agree to share with them, for them to disect, analyze and sell in perpetuity, and to wonder how future advancements in adtech might use this data in less benign ways than today.

At the very least, I would like a share of the profits they're making from me. Facebook and Google should be paying users to use their products, or everyone on the internet rather, but I don't think their shareholders would like that very much.

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-uploaded-1-5-millio...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27531714