United States planning legislation to offer Europeans the same privacy rights as US citizens

03 Jul 2014 • engadget.com

The United States government intends to offer European citizens the same privacy rights extended to US citizens. Exactly how it will do that is yet to be determined, but US attorney general Eric Holder this week told European leaders of the Obama administration’s intention to create legislation offering EU citizens “the same right to seek judicial redress for intentional or willful disclosures of protected information and for refusal to grant access or to rectify any errors in that information.”

I hate all this nationalism. US rights, EU rights… whatever happened to a discussion about human rights? Is an individual’s privacy something we should generally respect? If so, then why does their country of origin have anything to do with the discussion? And if these things truly aren’t “rights” then lets stop calling them that and use a different word to frame the discussion.

I honestly believe George Carlin had it about right:

Now if you think you do have rights, one last assignment for you. Get on the Internet go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia in the search field for Wikipedia type Japanese Americans 1942 - and you’ll find out all about your precious fucking rights.

In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese american citizens in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That’s all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had: “right this way”… into the internment camps.

Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most their government took them away - and rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away they are privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly you’d know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter and shorter.