[governance] FYI - Obama/Rouseff joint statement

[David Cake]

> On 3 Jul 2015, at 10:40 am, Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh at hserus.net> wrote:
> 
> Wouldn't you say that safety and security online as well as offline is a fundamental human right?


	Well, human rights are a specific list of rights, not merely a way of talking about aspirational desires for good things.

	But article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is relevant here:
> 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.

	In so far as cyber-security issues can interfere with the privacy or correspondence, or constitute attacks on honour or reputation, they can be a human rights issue.
	This does not mean that all cyber-security issues are therefore human rights issues, of course, and the broader term includes a lot of issues that have very little to do with human rights.

> Being phished and having your bank account emptied, your personal data misused etc is, while bloodless, far more damaging than being mugged and relieved of your purse and phone on a street.
> 
> For several activist groups, the threat of any number of government and/or other interests hacking into their communications remains a key concern.
> 
> Speaking as someone who has worked in security for over fifteen years it is a fascinating field where there is a fine balance constantly struck between security and privacy.

	As made clear in article 12, if you want to look at it from a human rights perspective, the preservation of privacy is a primary justification FOR cyber-securirty. Focussing on security to the point that it decreases privacy is bad from a human rights perspective - but as you point out, a regular part of cyber-security dialog is to talk in terms of balance, by which is meant how much should privacy be compromised in the cause of security. So when the emphasis shifts from human rights to cyber-security in general, human rights advocates (and privacy advocates specifically) have some cause for worry, just as a focus on  ‘national security’, while theoretically compatible with human rights, gives some cause to worry about surveillance, increased search and seizure, and other weakening of human rights.

> So I would not cite any emphasis on cyber security as harmful or bad on the face of it

	It is not intrinsically bad, but an emphasis on cyber-security over human rights is a legitimate cause for concern.

	David
> 
> --srs
> 
>> On 03-Jul-2015, at 8:04 am, Stephanie Perrin <stephanie.perrin at mail.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>> 
>> But I note that it does not appear anywhere near the important material on trade agreements, nor does it leaven the emphasis on cybersecurity we see below.
> 
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