I feel we need something much more strongly worded to protect our mail, paper or electronic, messages and other communications from being read, not just “respect”.

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layer8 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This exists in a number of EU member states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence

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thewebguyd 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The problem is, in all of those member states, they all have carve outs for "national security."

Germany, for exmaple, has secrecy of correspondence that extends to electronic communications, but allows for "restrictions to protect the free democratic basic order" and outlines when intelligence services can bypass the right to privacy.

Italy, France, and Polan also have similar carve outs.

Having it as a right isn't enough. National security and "public safety" carve outs need to be eliminated. So long as those exist, we have no right to privacy.

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localuser13 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

>National security and "public safety" carve outs need to be eliminated. So long as those exist, we have no right to privacy.

This is overly absolutist, or maybe idealistic view. National security and public safety IS more important than individual right to privacy. As an extreme example, if your friend was dying, you had a password to my email, and you knew that you can use information in my inbox to save that person i really hope you would do it.

In general I think that police with a court order should be able to invade someone's privacy (with judge discretion). I mean they can already kick down someone's doors and detain them for several days - checking email doesn't sound too bad compared to it, does it? I think they should also be legally obliged to inform that person in let's say 6 months that they did it.

The problem is that modern world is drastically different than the old world when you needed to physically hunt down letters. Now you can mass scan everyone's emails, siphon terabytes of personal data that stasi could only dream of, and invigilate everyone. This is something that is worth fighting against.

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layer8 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Rights are never absolute, they always have to be weighed against each other. The weighing can and should be debated, and needs strong protections when put into practice, but demanding an absolute is not reasonable.

	▲	kelnos a minute ago \| parent \| next [-]
		[delayed]
	▲	soraminazuki an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		That's how human rights abuses are justified though. Every single time. This whole thread is talking about exactly that.
	▲	derefr an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I dunno; I think in practice an absolute sometimes shakes out just fine. In this case, I see no reason that we would want to draft constitutional rights such that we consider a government's actions taken in pursuit of their national security to be, per se, legal — i.e. warranted, unable to be sued over, etc. Imagine instead, a much weaker right granted to the state: the right to maintain laws or regulations which require/force government or military employees to do things that violate people's rights and/or the law of the land. But with no limit on liability. No grant of warrant. Just the mildest possible form of preservation: technically constitutional; and not immediately de-fanged the first time the Supreme Court gets their hands on it. So, for example, some state might introduce a new law saying that soldiers can come to your house and confiscate your laptop. And then the head of that state might actually use that law to invade your home and take your laptop. Given that the law exists, it would be legal for the head-of-state to give this order. And it would also be legal for the soldiers to obey this order (or to put it another way, court-martialable for the soldiers to disobey this order, since it's not an illegal order.) But the actual thing that happened as a result of this law being followed, would be illegal — criminal theft! — and you would therefore be entitled to sue the state for damages about it. And perhaps, if it was still reporting on Find My or whatever, you might even be entitled to send police to whatever NSA vault your laptop is held in, to go get it back for you. (Where, unlike the state, those police do have a warrant to bust in there to get it. The state can't sue them for damages incurred while they were retrieving the laptop!) The courts wouldn't be able to strike down the law (the national-security provision allows the state to declare it 'not un-constitutional", remember?); but since obeying the law produces illegal outcomes, you would be able to punish the government each and every time they actually use it. In as many ways as the state caused you and others harm through their actions. There is absolutely zero reason why the state shouldn't be expected to "make people whole" for damages it has caused them, each and every time it does something against the people's interest in the name of national security. And the simplest way to calculate that penalty / make the claiming and distribution of those rewards practical, would be to just not remove liability for these actions taken on behalf of the state, by not granting the state the right to do them in the first place. Just put them in the position of any other criminal, and force them to go to court to defend themselves. Change my mind!
	▲	dmitrygr an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I disagree. A right to privacy not only can be demanded, it should be demanded.

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g-b-r an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

"to protect the free democratic basic order", the irony.

It's incredible how even with the current surge of autocracy, most politicians can't see that the surveillance tools they crave for, could come under control of people much worse than them.

And can't see what they could do with them.

I think that many current governments in Europe are convinced that more surveillance will stop the autocratic surge. It's insane that they don't see how this is far from guaranteed, and how it will go if they're wrong.