There are no absolute rights, even in the charter of human rights, which is about as basic as it gets. The reality is that every right, if regarded as absolute, violates another fundamental right, if regarded as absolute.

Take for example Article 3 of the declaration of human rights:

> Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

The article already has a collision set up in itself: You have the right to live in safety. But also, everyone has the right to live in liberty. If taken as an absolute, the right of liberty would prevent incarceration of dangerous individuals, violating the other individuals right to all life in safety.

Similarly, other fundamental rights get curtailed: The freedom of speech is in balance with the right to personal dignity of article one and other rights.

Not acknowledging that even fundamental human rights are in a tension with each other is just ignoring reality and will get you nowhere in a legal discussion.

The discussion is not which right is absolute, it is about how to balance the tension between the various rights. And different societies strike a different balance here.

Take for example the right to freedom and liberty. Lifelong imprisonment without parole as punishment is not a thing in Germany. There’s an instrument that allows the court to keep the perpetrator locked up in case the court considers the individual dangerous, but until 1998, this could not be retroactively be applied. There was a major legal upheaval with multiple rounds to the constitutional court to change that and it took until 2012/2013 to find a legal framework that wasn’t declared unconstitutional. To this day, however, Sicherheitsverwahrung is not a punishment, but a combination of therapy and ensuring the safety of society and it’s subject to regular checks if the conditions for the lockup still exist. The individuals are also not held in prisons, but in nicer facilities.

On the other hand, many US states still have the death penalty and are proud of it.

So you’re saying there can be no worthwhile privacy protections as long as subpoenas and search warrants exist and it’s physically possible for someone to eavesdrop? I guess we might as well switch everything back to http.