[LINK] UN declares that the right to privacy, including online privacy, is a human right

[Jim Birch]

On Monday, a U.S. federal district court ruled that the extent of the
National Security Agency's surveillance programs "surely...infringes on
'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth
Amendment." It is the first successful legal challenge to the NSA's program
since leaks about the programs began in June.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/16/this_court_case_could_kneecap_the_nsa?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Morning%20Brief&utm_campaign=MB%2012.17.13#sthash.pR3fdmNp.dpbs

This actually seems a little more hopeful than individual encryption
actions (most people won't do this stuff) or a quaint demand that
government surveillance just stop.  Surveillance will become increasingly
easier, smarter and normal over time as we become surrounded by smarter
interacting systems.  These systems have benefits but they are prone to
misuse, on purpose or though zealous incompetence.  It seems much better to
me to develop that there are baseline rules of what is acceptable and what
is not - and back it up with some serious/extreme penalties for
transgressions - rather than imagining that world should or could revert to
some mythological pre-Internet age of information naivety.

I'm not sure about this but I also appear to have a different scale of harm
to most people of organisations that might be tracking me: I'd put the NSA
somewhere near the bottom.  Off the top of my head, something like:
criminal organisations (clearly the worst), random shadowy uncontrolled
companies, big name companies with a brand to support, the NSA (etc), the
Australian government.  The NSA appear to have achieved about nothing with
their zillion dollar surveillance operation except pissing a lot of people
off and promoting privacy awareness.

- Jim