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From Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) accepted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 -------- Article 12 No one shall be sub

• usern20260720 1mo ago
  The US is not a country governed by the rule of the law
  • 9dev 1mo ago
    at least not by universal human rights, apparently
    • schubidubiduba 1mo ago
      At this point it is neither
  • avazhi 1mo ago
    [flagged]
  • spl757 1mo ago
    The US is currently governed by a dictator propped up by an oligarchy that can only do that because of the Citizens United supreme court decision. Until Citizens United is mitigated, and that appears to be starting to happen as states make laws that state you can't be on the ballot in their state if you take large, anonymous campaign donations from people who will want, and get, a return on their investment. Hawaii is either considering, or has passed just such a law. We don't even need a plurality of states to make similar laws, just the right ones. Look at a chart of campaign spending prior to, and following the Citizens United decision. Spoiler alert, it looks like a hockey stick standing upright.
    • mrcwinn 1mo ago
      An elected dictator with a nearing term limit. America continues to innovate!
      • shigawire 1mo ago
        Competitive authoritarianism is a closer term that IR people use.
      • spl757 1mo ago
        One I belive has no intention of leaving office, and is trying to prevent the midterm elections from happening. Since the founding of the US, no elections have been delayed, or missed. Not once. Not during WWII, not after 9/11, never. The failure that allowed trump to happen stems from one thing. Lack of imagination. The system in the US assumes that all of the politicians are at least attempting to argue in good faith. trump is more like a hurricane. he rolled in, fucked everthing up, and will roll out. After November when the Democrat party has control of the upper and lower houses of congress, there are going to be investigations, grand jury indictments, and people will go to prison. They will also begin the work of closing some of the loopholes that were used to bypass how the government is supposed to operate.
      • sofixa 1mo ago
        Putin also had a nearing term limit, but he found a transparent way around it. He didn't have "Putin next election year" merch for it, so I guess you can say this is innovation.
    • inigyou 1mo ago
      Citizens United is a scapegoat here. The people genuinely want what they voted for.
      • shigawire 1mo ago
        But the people generally seem to want whatever the person who spends the most money on media says they should want.
  • shuwix 1mo ago
    It's governed by the wicked version of Anglo-Saxxon law. In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe. In other cases, it's insanity. In normal World, criminals have rights for any kind of defense. And that's good, because government have power to make anyone "criminal". Total breach of privacy by US government is a mirror to shitload of problems US has. Europe js heading same direction (both the problems & government solutions).
    • embedding-shape 1mo ago
      I think even by the second word you're outside bicycling, US isn't governed by anything at this point, except some rich people. > In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe. What on earth are you talking about, "victims" definitively have rights in most European countries, but the fact you seemingly think there is one "Continental law system in Europe" clearly shows you have zero idea what you're talking about, Europe isn't one country with one law system across the continent... Sometimes, it's better just to say nothing :)
      • paganel 1mo ago
        > Europe isn't one country with one law system across the continent... The Napoleonic Code is indeed pervasive across the continent. And, ignoring that, we have EU law, which is supra-statal law that most certainly and de facto has come to replace/impose on "local" laws.
        • homarp 1mo ago
          https://lawshun.com/article/what-is-the-relationship-between-eu-law-and-national-law https://lawshun.com/article/what-is-the-relationship-between... explains the complex relation between EU law and national law. in a nutshell, EU law takes precedence over conflicting national laws in areas where the EU has competence. While EU law is directly applicable or requires transposition into national law, member states retain autonomy in areas outside EU competence. National courts are obligated to interpret domestic law in line with EU law. National Constitutional Court/Supreme court, occasionally challenge EU law’s supremacy.
  • shrubby 1mo ago
    Or basic humanity
  • unsupp0rted 1mo ago
    Everybody of any means around the world seems to be eager to invest in this country not governed by the rule of law
  • DeusExMachina 1mo ago
    Except that the UDHR is not the rule of law. It is a mere declaration, as specified at the top of the page, that "is widely recognized as having inspired [...] the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties" That does not make it an enforceable law. Moreover, treaties are agreements between countries, not laws, which a country can violate at will. People might create supranational organizations like the UN or the ECHR, but that has, untimately, no enforcement power because that always belongs to sovereign countries. Violating a treaty can also lead to retaliation by other signatories or even war, but it still does not make a treaty law. It might well be that the US has specific laws that prevent charging a citizen when they wipe their phone. But that must be a law passed by the US legislature, not a "universal declaration".
    • rswail 1mo ago
      Not necessarily the same in every nation, but any treaty ratified by Congress in the United States has the same status as any law passed by Congress. It is subject to judicial review, but has equal standing. So the US cannot "violate [it] at will".
      • inigyou 1mo ago
        Sure it can, just like it can violate laws passed by Congress.
  • ransom1538 1mo ago
    Yes. We need to respect all laws. I am strongly uphold the Peruvian Naval Law here in Michigan.
  • Taek 1mo ago
    I get that the political system could be better, but having been to places that actually are not governed by the rule of law, I can assure you that the US is doing quite well on that front. When there is actually no rule of law, consequences include: + entire regions / areas where merely visiting those areas invites a highly non-trivial (think, more than 10% chance) chance of being kidnapped or murdered + every neighborhood and business has substantial, often military-grade private security + if credit exists at all, it exists outside of any formal banking structure and will have interest rates that are north of 30% APR, sometimes north of 100% APR. I've genuinely seen interest rates on credit as high as 2% *per day*, and these are rates that the local population is willing to pay for certain short term expenses (like food) + families that maintain good social relationships with the local police/militants/whoever-has-guns live substantially better lives than people without good social connections to the local authorities. + Travelers are told on repeat: "it's really not safe here for non-locals, you should stay inside and also reconsider being in this part of the world at all" + If the travelers are there for business reasons, they are probably assigned 24/7 armed guards (as many as 4 guards per traveler, each guard carrying full-auto weapons) by the locals, provided for free. And while the US maybe has a neighborhood here or there which might be like this, every part of every major city in the country has more rule of law than the above.
    • basisword 1mo ago
      When you can't trust your highest court is impartial the whole system is untrustworthy. Unfortunately the US system is designed in such a way that the highest court can't be trusted (life terms, appointed by the sitting president).
      • gottorf 1mo ago
        > the highest court can't be trusted (life terms, appointed by the sitting president) Do you really think that judges that have to run for reelection every few years can be more trusted to rule on cases fairly, according to the law, rather than bending to popular whims?
        • 1mo ago
  • jckahn 1mo ago
    Also the legal system is not autistic. It's based on vibes more than anyone wants to admit.
    • deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
  • ImJamal 1mo ago
    What country does not have a law against destruction of evidence? It seems like arresting a person for a law that most countries have is following the rule of law.
    • rdiddly 1mo ago
      Evidence of what? Had a crime been charged when the search was undertaken? You can't just declare things evidence in order to get unfettered access to them.
      • ImJamal 1mo ago
        That is not how any of this works. Destruction of evidence is a crime regardless if you have been charged with a crime. This is the case under both federal and Georgia law.
        • rdiddly 1mo ago
          Okay, and how are you supposed to know when your own property is evidence and when it's not, when you've committed no crime? That reasoning doesn't "work," so in fact that's not how it "works," it's simply unjust and presumes guilt.
          • ImJamal 1mo ago
            Georgia law requires "intent" and federal law requires "knowingly" doing it. Being charged with a crime is completely irrelevant. You probably should take 2 minutes and read the law since it would have completely answered your question. I would also say that in this case it is quite clear he intended and knowingly did this so he could be charged under either law. They were asking him for his phone in connection to an alleged crime and he provided the password which erases the phone.
            • rdiddly 1mo ago
              I'd rather have you answer it, so thanks. My point is that if intent or knowledge is required, that means you must be aware of a crime by you or someone else. Assuming your property has remained under your control, and that you have committed no crime (which is always supposed to be the presumption), the chief way by which you would find out that your own property, that you can usually destroy freely, is now deemed "evidence" and not to be destroyed, is by being charged with a crime involving said property. Until you are charged, you don't know it's evidence. So the charge is not irrelevant. Anyone can read the damn law, I'm saying the law is bullshit and rests on circular reasoning. Charging with destroying evidence will in some cases require presuming guilt for the crime the evidence supposedly supports.
  • chermi 1mo ago
    A UN declared right is not legally binding in general AFAIK. Assuming I'm correct, your comment is non sequitur. Not that I agree at all what happened.
  • UltraSane 1mo ago
    Judges have been stopping hundreds of things Trump has tried to do.
    • dredmorbius 1mo ago
      Lower courts. SCOTUS has overwhelmingly sided with the Administration. Not always, but quite often.
  • thesmtsolver2 1mo ago
    This is the kind of comment that is considered informative and acceptable?
  • linuxhansl 1mo ago
    While there are things less than ideal in the US, this is absolutely not the case. The "Rule of Law" applies to everybody, including the President (recent decisions of the supreme court not withstanding - though they are very unfortunate). You have provisions for the freedom of press, freedom of speech, to be free from unreasonable searches, a reliable court system, etc, etc. Searches at the border are murky legal territory, and I think that there is a problem here. You may also argue that the president and senate have too much power, or that gerrymandering is a serious problem (which it is). But from these you cannot conclude a general lawlessness. (I'm from North-Western Europe, living in the US for a few decades now, so I feel that I have at least some data to compare.)
• antonvs 1mo ago
  The UDHR is a non-binding declaration - in and of itself, it has no legal force. The 4th Amendment of the US Constitution is more legally relevant, but part of the function of courts is to carve out exceptions to laws like that for law enforcement purposes, so practically speaking such provisions are much less absolute than their wording tends to imply.
  • attila-lendvai 1mo ago
    such documents are worth only as much as the population wants to, is willing to, and is able to enforce them.
  • KoolKat23 1mo ago
    Generally you can't carve out from a constitution, it is all encompassing. You can reinterpret perhaps but "carve outs" are only by amendment to the constitution. It's a concept called constitutional supremacy. There's generally ranking to laws. Think of a venn diagram with subset circles inside bigger circles. Constitutional Law > Statutory/Legislative Law > Administrative/Regulatory Law > Case Law/Common Law
    • deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
    • antonvs 1mo ago
      How do you reconcile what you’re saying with the actual situation? A relevant example is the border search exception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
      • milutinovici 1mo ago
        Very simple. Rule of law in the US has been crumbling for some time
• astrobe_ 1mo ago
  Yes. People here imagining workarounds based on automatic wipe, encryption, etc. should rather acknowledge that their country is slowly drifting to a fascist state. Your tech tricks are childish. Act like adults. Take responsibility, make decisions, take action, gather support.
  • mort96 1mo ago
    I'm not in the US, but say I was. I'm fully on board that the country is slowly (or not so slowly) drifting into becoming a fascist state. Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do? What amount of taking responsibility, making decisions, taking action and gathering support is gonna help in that situation? Technological workarounds which leave federal agents unable to search my phone isn't gonna fix the slide into fascism. But it might make my trip back home more comfortable. Activism against fascism isn't gonna make my trip back home more comfortable. But it might play a role in fighting the slide into fascism. Hell, activist work to fight the slide into fascism might be the reason why I would rather not have my phone search by federal agents at the airport. Individual problem require individual solutions, systemic problems require systemic solutions, and both kinds of solutions are valuable because both kinds of problems are real. Most people make the mistake of proposing individual solutions to systemic problems. You make the mistake of dismissing individual solutions to individual problems. (I have also intentionally ignored here whether these solutions will actually work. I'm guessing some could, most would not. "I ran out of battery on my phone and didn't bring a laptop, sorry" would probably work. Some complicated cryptographic setup which "technically doesn't erase the data but leaves it inaccessible" probably wouldn't work; the federal agent wouldn't recognize the difference.)
    • astrobe_ 1mo ago
      Fair enough. It's fine as long as people don't forget that fixing individual problems won't fix systematic problems; it would be like curing the symptoms, not the root cause.
    • jusssi 1mo ago
      > Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do? Don't take your phone and/or other devices you don't want to have searched. It's the advice routinely given to those planning a trip from the rest of the world to the US.
• madaxe_again 1mo ago
  The U.S. is actively hostile to the UN as an entity, and to what it stands for, and has been for a long, long time - now, the mask has come off.
  • gottorf 1mo ago
    > the UN as an entity, and to what it stands for What do you imagine the UN stands for? Let's not make the mistake of judging a program by its name or intention and not by its output. Mind you, this is the same UN on whose Human Rights Council sat such eminent proponents of human rights as Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Afghanistan, and Cuba. Besides, the US historically funded about a third of the UN, out of 193 member states. It's farcical to suggest that the US is "actively hostile" to the thing that wouldn't even exist without its backing.
    • madaxe_again 1mo ago
      The UN stands for the UN charter - which the U.S. was a signatory of, of course - but from the 70’s onwards, US support for the UN waned to the point where we are today, where a withdrawal is not inconceivable. As to what specifically the U.S. has opposed… The Vienna convention. ICESCR. CEDAW. UNCLOS. Basel convention. Migrant workers convention. Convention on biodiversity. Convention on rights of the child (even North Korea signed this one, but the U.S. opposed it, still does). Comprehensive test ban treaty. Ottawa, Rotterdam, and Stockholm conventions. Convention on cluster munitions. Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons (separate to the TBT). BBNJ/High seas treaty. Finally, the Paris agreement. This isn’t even an exhaustive list. Just realised I forgot about the Rome statute and the ICC. Oh and the arms trade treaty. And the framework convention on climate change. The UN is supposed to be a supranational authority over all nations. The U.S. views it as a blunt force instrument to use against others, but disregards its authority in almost all respects. It’s even codified in the constitution, as passing a UN treaty requires a ⅔ majority of senators present, unlike any other type of legislation which just needs a legislative majority. Finally, in January this year, the U.S. left 31 entities such as UNESCO, the WHO, and the HRC. So, what part of reality is farcical to you?
• avazhi 1mo ago
  [flagged]
  • mda 1mo ago
    What is your beef with UN and the statement itself? its quite funny actually. Do you support the mentioned law? Hard to understand what you are trying yo say.
    • avazhi 1mo ago
      [flagged]
      • nephihaha 1mo ago
        The UN runs UNESCO, UNHCR, UNICEF and the WHO who have all influenced the direction of countries. The 2020 lockdown across the world was on WHO advice.
  • blinky81 1mo ago
    This is a funny comment. What are you saying? The UN is one of the greatest achievements we've been able to do as a society. It's far from perfect. But would you rather live in a world without one?
    • avazhi 1mo ago
      [flagged]
      • sofixa 1mo ago
        You really need to look into why the UN was created and what purpose it serves. Because without a common forum for discussion, things would absolutely be worse.
  • bluebarbet 1mo ago
    Angry vulgar comments like these are why HN should just avoid politics altogether.
• flanked-evergl 1mo ago
  What relevance does that have here, though? Most countries that are actually signatories don't even adhere to it. The UN is totally feckless and hypocritical, and even if they were not, they are antidemocratic.
  • fn-mote 1mo ago
    > What relevance does that have here, though? It is a moral statement, not a law. The poster is arguing that the US is behaving in an immoral manner. The basis for their argument is the Declaration of Human Rights.
    • flanked-evergl 1mo ago
      > > What relevance does that have here, though? > It is a moral statement, not a law. How do you figure that? Does the UN define morality for all peoples in the world? Evidently not. What moral weight is added to some text if some governments of some countries have voted for it? Not even the votes of the majority one people group in their national home define morality, so the votes of the UN General Assembly definitely does not define morality.
      • inigyou 1mo ago
        It doesn't define it, it discovers it. The UN is where countries find their common ground. If they have none, though, the UN can't impose any.
        • flanked-evergl 1mo ago
          So the UN discovers morality by counting votes of government representatives of a bunch of countries for a document that was drafted without their input? And this somehow means it's representative of morality? What relevance does the common ground between countries have to morality? How does the common ground between Turkey and Greece, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, North Korea and South Korea, China and Japan "discover" morality? Countries almost by definition don't have common ground, the closest they have is contested ground. People may have common ground, but it's somewhat fanciful to suggest that the representatives of the 18 countries who drafted the UDHR somehow was in any position to act as the moral representatives even for the 18 countries they represented. They were some diplomats, probably all thoroughly immoral people if we somehow ever manage to figure out what the word moral actually meant, which I doubt. Can you elaborate on this process as you understand it? I just can't quite wrap my head around this. To me, it seems that at best this process will result in something that exactly no person in the world would recognize as moral. A bit like Solomon's proposal to split the baby. How do you define morality if you think the UN can discover it? Is there any way to check their work? Can I do a test to see if they made a mistake as I can with any other scientific disciple which discovers things about our world? Does their work make some prediction that we can actually check against reality to see if it's true or false?
• encom 1mo ago
  >arbitrary Border searches aren't arbitrary. Sure, in the sense you may or may not get searched, but not in the sense that cops come and turn over your house for no reason. Crossing the border, you know some fraction of travellers will get searched, and that the government does so lawfully. Antagonising law enforcement in this situation is not a smart move, no matter how righteous you feel it is, unless you're doing it as some form of protest. With that said, I do think searching phones is absolute bullshit, and I'm not arguing in favour of it at all.
  • inigyou 1mo ago
    What fraction of travellers get their phones "randomly" searched for child porn specifically, as in this case?
  • yesb 1mo ago
    Border searches aren't arbitrary when done for the purposes of border security and applied to travelers in a non-arbitrary way. It's pretty clear that CBP agents have a wide discretion to search people at their own whims i.e. arbitrarily. >that the government does so lawfully There are many legal question in this case, it's not clear the government acted lawfully. If he'd have arrived in a different federal court district, the search was unlawful because precedent says they need reasonable suspicion. Not to mention this was a pretext to gather warrantless evidence for the FBI for a domestic investigation and nothing to do with securing the border. >Antagonising law enforcement in this situation is not a smart move Not what he did.
    • encom 1mo ago
      >Not what he did. Maybe "antagonise" isn't the right word (ESL). By tricking the border agent into wiping the device, you have made him annoyed / angry / look foolish etc. No matter how much you are in the right, you have now given this person, with the power to create a lot of problems for you, the motivation to do so. You have to weigh that against coming home to your wife and children, in time for dinner. That's not fair, but that's reality. Or maybe you crossed the border, with the intent to create this situation, to get it tried in court. More power to you. About five years ago, here in Denmark, the government decided that freedom of assembly no longer applied. An activist decided to hold a party for about 10 people, including his lawyer, called the police on himself, and live streamed the whole thing. I can't find whatever became of that case, because search engines can no longer search. His name is Lars Andersen. He's been jailed a lot of times for petty bullshit.
• mrcwinn 1mo ago
  Was this arbitrary?
  • raluk 1mo ago
    What would be non-arbitrary case where border patrol would need to check your telephone to be sure about safety it provides?
  • abustamam 1mo ago
    I think the concept of arbitrary is arbitrary because the one searching can always claim cause for xyz reason thanks to the Patriot act and other laws.
• tootie 1mo ago
  I mean we have the 4th amendment here too. But there are exceptions for border control that have been upheld in court.
  • ImHereToVote 1mo ago
    Why?
    • bergerjac 1mo ago
      Because they haven’t entered the country yet, therefore it’s a different type of jurisdiction with different rules & regulations.
      • ImHereToVote 1mo ago
        How many miles from the border is this the case?