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Human rights is ill-defined, certainly less well-defined than anonymity. Saying the project serves human rights effectively means the project serves whoever get

Human rights is ill-defined, certainly less well-defined than anonymity. Saying the project serves human rights effectively means the project serves whoever gets to define what is a human right.

jachee 8y ago
Human Rights are very clearly, and universally defined[0]. They're things that every human deserves. There's not really any room for debate about that. [0] http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/inde...
- laretluval 8y ago
  Seems pretty subjective to me. For example, "This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."
- jlawson 8y ago
  What rights people have and how those should be applied to real-life situations is a massive ongoing question. Does a woman have a right to an abortion? Does an unborn baby have the right not to be killed? Does a responsible adult have the right to be armed? What about with a pistol or an automatic weapon? Do religious people have the right not to have their beliefs disparaged? What about Christians vs "piss christ"? What about Muslims versus Mohammed cartoons? What about micro-religions of 100 people? Or Scientology?? Do people have the right to free speech? Does the right to free speech mean only the goverment can't persecute you directly, or does it include a situation where a cartel of infrastructure companies (credit cards, website hosts) decide to do everything to remove you from the Internet? Do people have the right to health care, and how do we square that when resources are scarce? Does it mean doctors are slaves? The UNHRD is nothing like universally accepted. For example, Muslim countries considered that it violates their idea of what human rights are, so they made their own Islam-friendly human rights declaration [0]. That's like 1/4 of the world population rejecting your universal human rights at the outset. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_in_Islam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rig...
  - lugg 8y ago
    > What rights people have and how those should be applied to real-life situations is a massive ongoing question. That's a feature. We don't have a single entity that can prescribe and dictate specific rulings in specific scenarios under the diverse range of city, state, and nation laws the world contains. Acting like the UDHR was ever meant to be something so specific is asinine. "The Declaration was the first step in the process of formulating the International Bill of Human Rights, which was completed in 1966, and came into force in 1976, after a sufficient number of countries had ratified them." > The UNHRD is nothing like universally accepted. Except by most states the world over it is and has been for decades. "Some legal scholars have argued that because countries have constantly invoked the Declaration for more than 50 years, it has become binding as a part of customary international law." > For example, Muslim countries considered that it violates their idea of what human rights are, so they made their own Islam-friendly human rights declaration [0]. That's like 1/4 of the world population rejecting your universal human rights at the outset. Except they didn't reject the UDHR at the outset. Nobody did, not one member of the UN voted against. "Of the then 58 members of the United Nations, 48 voted in favor, none against, eight abstained, and two did not vote." Furthermore, The CDHR came what 14? years later? Likely after the radicalization of islam that took place during that period. I mean hell, back in the 60s/70s muslim women were wearing miniskirts. In fact, the simple fact that the CDHR exists tells me that, a) the UDHR is working as intended as it allows its existence, and b) the UDHR got things mostly right if a religous entity feels the need to disavow it and make their own. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
    - posterboy 8y ago
      > "Some legal scholars have argued that ... A paragraph later in the wiki-article you copied from, this is opinion is immediately refuted. Instead the buck stops at constitutions and the like. It's a declaration of interests. It is heavily stressing the word law, which is very much not an inherent value, that the term competing interests should be hard to shrug off. I am not going to write a fully fledged critique in a HN comment about this monumental document, but it's always going to be a two edged sword. For one funny bit see this paragraph: > Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Which is asymmetric, not to say utterly useless, without provision about where to leave to. I forgot what GP's point was :(

Human rights is ill-defined, certainly less well-defined than anonymity. Saying the project serves human rights effectively means the project serves whoever gets to define what is a human right.

jachee 8y ago

Human Rights are very clearly, and universally defined[0]. They're things that every human deserves. There's not really any room for debate about that. [0] http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/inde...

laretluval 8y ago
Seems pretty subjective to me. For example, "This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."
jlawson 8y ago
What rights people have and how those should be applied to real-life situations is a massive ongoing question. Does a woman have a right to an abortion? Does an unborn baby have the right not to be killed? Does a responsible adult have the right to be armed? What about with a pistol or an automatic weapon? Do religious people have the right not to have their beliefs disparaged? What about Christians vs "piss christ"? What about Muslims versus Mohammed cartoons? What about micro-religions of 100 people? Or Scientology?? Do people have the right to free speech? Does the right to free speech mean only the goverment can't persecute you directly, or does it include a situation where a cartel of infrastructure companies (credit cards, website hosts) decide to do everything to remove you from the Internet? Do people have the right to health care, and how do we square that when resources are scarce? Does it mean doctors are slaves? The UNHRD is nothing like universally accepted. For example, Muslim countries considered that it violates their idea of what human rights are, so they made their own Islam-friendly human rights declaration [0]. That's like 1/4 of the world population rejecting your universal human rights at the outset. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_in_Islam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rig...
- lugg 8y ago
  > What rights people have and how those should be applied to real-life situations is a massive ongoing question. That's a feature. We don't have a single entity that can prescribe and dictate specific rulings in specific scenarios under the diverse range of city, state, and nation laws the world contains. Acting like the UDHR was ever meant to be something so specific is asinine. "The Declaration was the first step in the process of formulating the International Bill of Human Rights, which was completed in 1966, and came into force in 1976, after a sufficient number of countries had ratified them." > The UNHRD is nothing like universally accepted. Except by most states the world over it is and has been for decades. "Some legal scholars have argued that because countries have constantly invoked the Declaration for more than 50 years, it has become binding as a part of customary international law." > For example, Muslim countries considered that it violates their idea of what human rights are, so they made their own Islam-friendly human rights declaration [0]. That's like 1/4 of the world population rejecting your universal human rights at the outset. Except they didn't reject the UDHR at the outset. Nobody did, not one member of the UN voted against. "Of the then 58 members of the United Nations, 48 voted in favor, none against, eight abstained, and two did not vote." Furthermore, The CDHR came what 14? years later? Likely after the radicalization of islam that took place during that period. I mean hell, back in the 60s/70s muslim women were wearing miniskirts. In fact, the simple fact that the CDHR exists tells me that, a) the UDHR is working as intended as it allows its existence, and b) the UDHR got things mostly right if a religous entity feels the need to disavow it and make their own. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
  - posterboy 8y ago
    > "Some legal scholars have argued that ... A paragraph later in the wiki-article you copied from, this is opinion is immediately refuted. Instead the buck stops at constitutions and the like. It's a declaration of interests. It is heavily stressing the word law, which is very much not an inherent value, that the term competing interests should be hard to shrug off. I am not going to write a fully fledged critique in a HN comment about this monumental document, but it's always going to be a two edged sword. For one funny bit see this paragraph: > Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Which is asymmetric, not to say utterly useless, without provision about where to leave to. I forgot what GP's point was :(