Kopikatsu said:
Consider it part of the background check. What you do in private reveals more about you as a person than anything you do in public.
Which would be fine if it were part of a police investigation (they need to look at things like that to do their job) but for a job application that's going a bit overboard, all a potential employer really needs to know is have you been convicted of any crimes before and if so, what crimes?
How does going through all the 'I love you' notes I left to my girlfriend over Facebook do that exactly?
What makes privacy a human right? Who decided that? What purpose does privacy serve? What benefits are there to privacy?
Imagine if nothing in your life
ever was private, imagine if everything you ever did, said, thought or felt was open to be viewed and examined by all.
Now imagine if your address, phone number, family, friend's and loved one's contact details and locations were avaliable to everyone at any time for any reason.
What if all of that information made it's way into the hands of someone who meant you or them harm? (given how there'd be no privacy there'd be nothing to prevent that)
There is a really damn good reason that everyone is entitled to their own privacy (namely, not everything we do needs to be public or should be public, in fact, making it all public could actually
endanger more lives than it actually saves).
As I said, 'It's a human right, end all' is a piss poor argument.
Human rights are fundamental and vital things that are considered to be worth upholding regardless of context or situation.
Something being a human right is actually a very strong arguement, regardless of how trivial you believe it to be, so unless there's a damn good reason otherwise it's a good enough reason on it's own to not do something.
We here in the west are lucky to never have to worry about most of our human rights being violated so if I were you I'd take a moment to stop and reflect on just how fortuneate you are that we collectively give a damn about your physical, mental and emotional well being.
Edit: Nothing is self-explanatory. 'Just because' is an even worse argument than 'It's a human right, end all' is.
'Just because' is a worse arguement, but that's not the arguement being made here.
The topic at hand is a gross violation of privacy with no decent justification behind it.