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A comment on NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide. Parent comment

Re:NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers world... by spikels on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @05:55PM (#6643689)
Unfortunately we don't live in the world you imagine but I would join you in trying to improve the world we actually live in. I don't see how a trade and travel embargo could possibly help - it would almost certainly make things worse! Clearly there is no actual right to privacy under international law and rules vary greatly by country and are often weak in practice[1]. This is want we need to change either through treaties, constitutions or laws. I don't know where you live but in the US it would probably take a constitional amendment - a very difficult procedure - or a very broad decision by the Supreme Court - unlikely.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_law

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Re:NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers world... by danbruc on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @06:19PM (#6643846)
The thing about isolating the USA was not meant as a real solution, it was just to illustrate my feelings. See also this comment [1] of mine for a clarification.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) [1] contains privacy right in article 12 [3]. The UDHR is not legally binding but the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) [4] is and contains the privacy rights, too. The USA signed and ratified the ICCPR. Maybe someone should just sue all the spying nations.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6643253

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...

[3] http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil...

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Re:NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers world... by lemming on Thursday October 31, 2013 @07:04AM (#6646117)
What's interesting with these declarations (and I'm surprised they don't even get a mention in the media) is that they specifically say that these rights cannot be denied based on "national or social origin". So it's basically illegal for the US to invade the privacy of foreign citizens according to the terms of those covenants. The US Constitution is probably in direct violation of it as far as I can tell since it specifically only applies to Americans.
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