Civil Liberties around the world

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Civil Liberties around the world Anonymous 03/01/16 (Tue) 19:07:57 No.18527

I've been more and more interested recently in civil liberties. The really fundamental civil liberties. Like speech, petitions, assembly, religion, no surveillance, no indefinite detention, no torture, no asset forfeiture, etc.. Not what happens every time I think "Oh hey, this is an interesting civil liberties organization," and instead of having their spotlight on some random Middle East country and how some guy got hanged for speaking out against the King, it's about how someone in the southern U.S. said something sexist once or refused to sell a gay guy a cake. That sort of shit really pisses me off. Tl;dr, suggest some other than (because I know of them already) the EFF, maybe ACLU, FIRE, or FLEX. I'd be especially interested in hearing about non-U.S. organizations.

Anyways, because of this, I've been comparing the U.S.' first amendment to other bills of rights and constitutions recently, and it surprises me how strong the U.S. first amendment really is compared internationally:

>Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Just so I can speak my mind and address a few points, let me use France's constitutional equivalent as a jumping off point:

>The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, save [if it is necessary] to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law.

First of all, France, like many other countries, has the usual placards. It sounds more like a nice thing to say at a speech rather than anything actionable, "The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man," is just some nice verbage, nothing that looks like it actually guarantees that right in French laws. Second, it gets rendered completely useless by the ending, "save…in the cases determined by the law." So, basically, "Lol, had you going for a second there, actually, we'll just make whatevs laws we want." And then France goes and makes the Gayssot Act as well as punishing Charlie Hebdo (this was before it Hebdo could be used as a political tool for the French state). Wonderful.

Meanwhile, the U.S. amendment has a very clear and actionable point, "Congress shall make no law." Yes, I know justices take leeway with it, but I would argue that the clarity in the long run has made a difference compared with other legal systems. Also, notice that when it says, "abridging the freedom of speech," it doesn't quibble about it like other constitutions do. It isn't like the U.N. human rights organization, which has let go of arguing for basic goddam free speech in places like North Korea for going after 'hate speech.'

Finally, the U.S. constitution essentially says, "Freedom of speech FIRST, then the law must conform to it." While the French constitution has it completely ass backwards.

India has this whole shitfest (pun intended) about "Oh, but it can't be this kind of speech," and then proceeds to label all the forms of speech that free speech is exactly needed for! "The integrity of India," for example. If you can't use free speech to criticize the government, then how can you call yourself a fucking democracy?!

The European Convention on Civil Rights also takes the Indian approach of saying, "Yeah, sure, free speech, except for everything we disagree with!"

I cherrypicked something I thought that, comparatively speaking, the U.S. was relatively O.K. on just to have a good ready-at-hand example. If I chose privacy rights and the whole surveillance issue, I would probably be reversing things quite a bit and lamenting the loss of the fourth amendment.

Speaking of the surveillance thing, I've found it incredibly depressing how that issue is fading away now. Snowden had something like a 20% difference in opinion about surveillance that he directly caused and then a couple years later they do the same poll and it's right back where it was. Meanwhile, does anyone remember Rand Paul's filibuster to stop the Patriot Act for a few glorious days of actual goddam freedom before the fucking "Freedom Act?" Fucking bullshit.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, are there any civil liberties organizations I can follow who look at news like this who are concerned with actual fundamental goddam civil liberties, but don't get distracted by all the fucking bullshit identity politics (especially the ones who outright contradict their cause doing so)?

Anonymous 03/01/16 (Tue) 20:31:42 No.18532

>Second, it gets rendered completely useless by the ending, "save…in the cases determined by the law." So, basically, "Lol, had you going for a second there, actually, we'll just make whatevs laws we want."

German Lawfag here. We have this neat thing here, too, at least on some constitutional rights. On all others, we might as well have it.

At least here, all constituional rights are alienable, to a certain degree, all but human dignity, but I'll come back to that one later. Take a constitutional right like freedom of speech. Say a policeman has taken you into custody for calling him a faggot. What the court will do is ask itself a few questions:

>What behavior does the right actually protect? Was the right actually infringed?

And, finally:

>Can this infringement be justified?

There are some hurdles you have to pass before you can take someone in for calling you a cum-guzzling, cock-hungry fag. You need a law that allows you to do so, the law must cite the right it limits, and - most importantly, perhaps - the infringement must be proportional. When is it proportional? Here are the requirements:

>Legitimate cause

You need a legitimate cause for infringing on a right. What is a legitimate cause? Just make something up, really. Public health (Volkgsgesundheit) has been deemed a legitimate cause for the prohibition of drugs, but no one even knows what the fuck it means. The honor of that police officer would be deemed a legitimate cause.

>Suitability

Is this infringement actually suitable for furthering that legitimate cause? Doesn't matter how little it is. Almost all laws pass this hurdle, because both the parliament and the government have a prerogative with respect to factual assessments, meaning the courts just check whether they are talking complete nonsense. I'll leave that example of the police officer now, because at this point, the courts just make shit up as they go along.

>Necessity

Are there other methods of furthering that legitimate cause which are equally effective, but less hard on you? Again, prerogative with respect to factual assessments.

>Proportionality in the strict sense

And here's where the judges weigh the costs and the benefits of an action. Or rather, they make shit up and then arbitrarily decide the case. It's legal dishonesty at its finest.

Human dignity, like I said, is completely inalienable, but to call what it actually means a "hot topic" or "controversial" would be an understatement. Peep shows and laserdrome have been deemed an attack on human dignity and prohibited for this reason. Nevertheless, I do like the concept of human dignity. It basically means that every human has an intrinsic value. Among other things, objectifying a human is a no-go. One land court has deemed it an affront on human dignity to forcefeed a drugdealer emetic agents. That case was particularly bad; basically, a guy who couldn't even speak german was held down by four policeman while some doctor with a lax understanding of the hippocratic oath made him ingest these drugs, which forced him to vomit and shit uncontrollably. The land court wasn't amused, and made sure the drug dealer got away with everything, while giving the cops one of the most brutal verbal beatdowns I have ever read in a verdict. Apparently, making someone vomit himself half to death without even telling him what you're doing to him is an objectification, as opposed to treating him like an actual human being.

Hope this made sense. Translating all this shit is not easy.

Anonymous 03/02/16 (Wed) 20:16:07 No.18606

>>18532

I don't have anything to add to that, but thanks for taking the time to post to clarify things nonetheless.

Anonymous 03/03/16 (Thu) 20:00:18 No.18691

>fundamental civil liberties

I really don't think 'fundamental rights', as we use the term, exist. The state does not recognize a limit to its power, nor could it possibly do so, because 'sovereignty' implies special moral authority.

Even in America, there's nothing 'fundamental' about the constitution. Nobody alive even signed it. It can be reinterpreted, ignored, changed, or even contradict itself (like the 18th ammendment).

It takes a special kind of mental disease to look to a state for freedom.

Anonymous 03/03/16 (Thu) 23:18:12 No.18703

>>18606

You're welcome. I assume you're the OP? Thanks for opening this thread.

>>18691

The relationship between state and constitution is like that between pro-life activists who get an abortion and the biblical commandments. Sure, we have to follow the bible, BUT this one particular abortion is not actually violating the biblical commandments. Sure, we have to follow the constitution, BUT this one particular statute is not actually violating the constitution. That is, unless you accept the premise that The Man is a complete sociopath. That might be true for Alan Dershowitz (fuck that guy, even though he did inspire my dystopian setting), but you should just read about the execution of Che Guevara. The agent in charge really, really hated this guy.

I think Ayn Rand was spot-on with her characterization of statists as being so hard in denial that they are actively afraid of the truth, at least some of the time. The worst thing for many of them would be to admit they are not actually servants, but destroyers of the constitution.