IN QUEUE: Protecting Privacy[Archived] [Complete]

Protecting Privacy:

Description: The General Assembly,

Defining privacy as the right to:
• Keep personal information secret (such as one's sexuality, gender, beliefs, occupation, activities or hobbies, or any other aspect of their lifestyle),
• Have one's property undisturbed or be free of examinations, searches, or use by others,
• Keep one's contact information and the location of their home or other identifiers secret,
• Conceal the activities and objects that occur and exist within one's privacy and out of view of the public

Defining probable cause as enough evidence to justify a belief that a crime has been committed and that certain property was associated with that crime or may contain evidence of that crime,

Forbids member states from infringing on any person's privacy outside of the conditions allowed in this resolution,

Demands it be a punishable crime for any person, corporation, organization or other entity to intentionally infringe on a person's privacy without consent for the purpose of monetary gain or with the intent to cause serious harm to the victim,

Allows member states to violate one's privacy in the process of an investigation with probable cause and the proper approval of an independent judge or independent government official,

Prohibits any private information gained during an investigation of a crime from being published or shared with anyone outside of the law enforcement or justice systems until official charges are made,

Further allows member states to compel citizens to reveal personal information for census, or study of the general population purposes,

Declares that any personal information revealed for the purpose of census will never be released or shared about any individual person until such a time that everyone who in the member state who was alive at that time can be reasonably expected to have been dead for twenty years,

Clarifies that a person may be required to give consent to reveal private information or have ones personal details investigated as a term of doing business, seeking employment, using a service, or entering a premises owned by another party or the government so long as a rational reason may be provided for that requirement,

Bans revealing private information of someone else gathered in the circumstances described in the above clause without the consent of that person.

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Topid:

Howdy Elu! I am contacting you about my proposal Protecting Privacy.

About two months ago a resolution to repeal "Right to Privacy" passed. Although the repealed resolution was flawed, the repeal called for a replacement. Since then, I've been drafting a replacement on the forums, and have finally submitted it. My proposal is called Protecting Privacy.

The main point of the proposal is to prevent a government or corporation or any entity from infringing on the privacy of any person. This draft however, has two exemptions: anyone suspected of a crime may have their privacy violated in the process of the investigation, and the government may require people to complete a census. Though the use of information in both situations is limited. Also, the resolution makes it clear that a person may be required to consent to have their privacy invaded as a term of employment, doing business, using a service or other cases. I'd also like to note in conclusion, one of the main opposition points has been that this in some way grants privacy to those suspected of being terrorists and is thus somehow a threat to national security of all member states. If a government has reason to believe a person is a terrorist, that person is suspected of a crime and thus is exempted from the privacy protection.

I would appreciate it if you would look the proposal over and give it your approval. I believe this is an important right we should protect for all people.

Delegate of The United States
- Topid

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Informational Review by the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs::

This is an informational review of the GA Resolution-At-Vote, “Protecting Privacy” published by The North Pacific's Ministry of World Assembly Affairs for your convenience and consideration.

Essentially, “Protecting Privacy” is a bill establishing limitations on government intrusion on privacy; namely the protection of personal information, activities and property from public scrutiny. Thus, in a member-nation that objects to a Right to Privacy, the adoption of this bill will mean an end to forceful seizures based on whims and witch-hunt reasoning. There are, though, many well established justifications for the Right to Privacy to be a human right; a person may have good reason to want personal information such as one’s sexual orientation, activities or religion held private to avoid discrimination, violence, intolerance, embarrassment or damage to their professional reputation.

Privacy can also be essential to the formation of a liberal democratic society; without privacy, one’s government can know how one votes – fueling an illiberal democracy in many cases. Alternatively, the Right to Privacy allows for people to establish a “public self” for interaction in society and a “private self” where the freedom of thought can be freely pursued without having to exercise sociopolitical discretion.

This is where the modern-day, western conservative often objects to the right of privacy; conservative policymakers might argue that (1) if one wishes for something not to enter in the public domain at all, they shouldn’t involve it in their private domain! (2) the only people that should be worried of lax privacy laws are those guilty of crimes (one Canadian cabinet minister recently went as far as to say, “[critics of an online surveillance bill] can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”). But there are obvious objections here; in response to the former, one may opine that leads to the conflation of public and private life – a society would become more like a Panopticon than a comfortable haven for individuals; in response to the latter, one might opine that the invasion of privacy may reveal sensitive and/or embarrassing personal information to police staff that is not relevant to the case but may be leaked to the community, moreover, fishing for criminal activity by evading privacy without probable cause may yield a false positive or otherwise, unfair, circumstantial evidence against a defendant.

Now that it has been discussed where traditional policy and philosophy often stands on the issue of privacy, The Ministry shall review the details of the specific legislation at hand.

The resolution essentially lays out a series of laws to ensure that the Right to Privacy is upheld and only to be curtailed for (1) investigations with probable cause, (2) census information, (3) consented curtailment. The resolution uses the legal standard of proof of “probable cause” which is a higher than “reasonable suspicion”, the standard required to search student’s belongings in schools in America according to the controversial New Jersey v. T. L. O.; note however there is no distinction made between child and adult in this resolution.

One commenter, Cowardly Pacifists notes that the definition of “privacy” in the resolution includes “privacy” in the definition. Likewise, another notes that this resolution does not bar employers from evading the Right to Privacy to investigate, say, an employee’s private “Facebook” information. According to the language used, companies are only prohibited from *revealing* information gained during these cyber-investigations without consent, if domestic laws required consent to conduct the investigation initially. Companies are only prohibited from organizing their own cyber-investigations and evading privacy if it is done for monetary gain or with “the intent to cause serious harm to the victim”.

It should be noted that this resolution does not require companies to have the freedom to conduct these cyber-investigations; if the resolution passes, you are still allowed to have tougher privacy laws to protect individuals – this resolution only sets the “benchmark” to which all member-nations must comply. Some commentators are unsatisfied though with the extent of the resolution, some may feel it doesn’t “go far enough”; Auralia notes that the allowance for personal information gained through censuses arguably should never be released.

The Minister of World Assembly Affairs finds that there is compelling reasons to believe that this resolution could draw informed discussion in the North Pacific, so much so that it does not want to intervene or disturb this process with a vote at this time.

Thus, the Ministry (1) recommends that the delegate "ABSTAIN" on Protecting Privacy until such time that a clear view has been decided upon by voters, and (2) calls upon all member-states in The North Pacific (that's you!) to carefully consider the viewpoints expressed in this informational statement. Thank you.

Yours,
Unibot
Minister of World Assembly Affairs in The North Pacific.

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Eluvatar:

2 aye, 2 against, 1 abstain.

Will abstain.

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