The UN disagrees.
Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks". [0]
You can argue what the right to privacy means and the limitations of that freedom in respect of non-arbitrary interference are acceptable, but to claim privacy is not a human right is simply incorrect.
> Although not legally binding, the contents of the UDHR have been elaborated and incorporated into subsequent international treaties, regional human rights instruments, and national constitutions and legal codes.
United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948, Article 12: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 1966, Article 1: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor or reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Ageism here is unwarranted. I'd assume there are now more 40something years olds keeping the traditional hacker values (before "hacker" became to mean "dude stealing money from gullible strangers over the internet") than there are 20something years olds. Because they actually might have been the part of that old hacker culture (not sure if it even exists now?). Now even in the best tech schools they'd probably teach you the most important thing on the internet (after the adtech of course) is to make AIs to ban "hate speech" and "misinformation". And if the independent hacker culture still exists, it's certainly not easy to find among the noise.
I think you may mistake the individuals for the whole. HN as a social center can be corrupted and coopted without any of the original individuals changing their behaviors, simply by adding more individuals with different behaviors. If by "they" you mean the individuals, your statement would then be incorrect, while if you mean the community gestalt, it would be correct.
Strange how the NSA can just skate through this. Then again, the US Constitution also says "All men are created equal" and that was a bunch of horseshit for centuries.
> Actually they go after the people committing the crime AND those facilitating it.
But only if it is in their interest. We don't see other services and platforms sanctioned for facilitating illegal activity. Furthermore, the Data Protection Directive does give users the (human!) right to privacy, considering that crypto isn't a currency, it's merely your private data which is also protected by GDPR.
Actually they go after the people committing the crime AND those facilitating it.
> Privacy is not a crime, it’s a human right
(a) Not a human right, (b) not enshrined in any country's law, (c) does not absolve illegal behaviour.