(no subject)

[sobrique]

Here is the European Convention of Human rights on wikipedia.
Would you mind having a quick look please? Yes you. Who's reading this now.

OK, now visualise someone you dislike. Maybe they're dirty. Maybe they're smelly. Maybe they're drunk and asking you for money on the street.

Now, this person. Do you feel it within you to stand up for _their_ human rights?
Here's the thing. These are not rights applicable to you. They are ... a set of obligations. A set of things that if you agree with them, you should be standing up now and fighting for them. No one will 'give' you rights. No one will stand up for that person on the street that you imagined, and say 'this man deserves better'. Not unless you're prepared to do so.

So please, stop for a moment, and consider. Are you prepared and willing to say 'Not in my world'. To speak out against all that would consider 'human rights' an exercise in expediency?

This is not something that we can turn aside from. Not if we cannot accept that some day, it might be us that's held in question.

Comments

[malal.livejournal.com]

I'm frankly shocked at how badly the UK is doing at sticking to them. Article 7 has been broken at least once in my memory, and legislation breaking others keeps cropping up as well.

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

well, the UK is kinda treating the whole thing as 'more like guidelines'. Which... well, is a bit disappointing really.

[cthulahoops.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the one I'm not so fond of. While it's a good general principle, it breaks down with regard to serious omissions in the law, particularly where the crimes are being committed by those who write the law.

The Nuremburg trials are the obvious counter example. Various legal magic was invented to try and pretend that the laws in question had always existed, the simple reality is that new laws were being invented to cover past crimes.

If it's going to be sometimes necessary to do this, then the matter should be approached honestly. Sometimes laws must be applied retrospectively.

(And before getting to off topic, go ECHR, there's been too much moaning about it in the Brtish press recently.)

[malal.livejournal.com]

OK, that is the one where I can see that there has been some cases it shouldn't apply to, though I'm tempted to argue that we've now reached a point where existing laws should be able to cope.

The problem is that this is still casually broken, and it shouldn't be. Example in case. You know how you can be ordered to hand over the encryption key of any encrypted file in your possession, and it's an offence to fail to comply? That goes back retroactively, so if you previously refused to comply, or if you have an encrypted file from before the laws date, sorry!

I think perhaps this one might need modifying. It needs to be "You can't retroactively make illegal something which isn't blatantly wrong at the time".

[cthulahoops.livejournal.com]

Yes, a fair enough modification, although "blatantly" is always going to cause arguments.

Well, the offense is not handing over the encryption key rather than using encryption so the date of encryption doesn't seem relevant. Do they really do people for failing to comply before the law? What's the point, just change the law, then order them again.

A very dangerous law regardless. I don't like the idea at all.