> The idea that human rights are universally agreed upon is silly.

True. But it's not silly to think that the UK, as a signatory to the EHCR did agree on what human rights are with 46 other countries.

> "Rights" that are prescribed upon a population without its consent can be oppressive

Hm, either those air quotes are doing a lot of work, or we have different understandings of 'oppressive'. The only explanation I can think of for your statement here is that there are fairly limited circumstances in which the rights of one individual result in restrictions on the behaviour of another - for example inciting hatred, threatening violence, spreading untruths. I certainly wouldn't describe any of those restrictions as oppressive. Whether you want to call the limitations 'wrong' or not is ultimately a judgement decision, but for what it's worth, I don't think any of these are wrong.

> this is clearly how a lot of people in the UK feel towards rules created by lawmakers in the EU.

This is also true. But unfortunately displays the ignorance of many people in the UK, as the ECHR is not tied to the EU, so being cross with the EU about "human rights" is, although undeniably a contributing factor to the referendum result, basically a mistake. In fact the recent Rwanda flights were blocked by the ECHR more than two years after the UK left the EU.

> I am much less concerned about websites tracking me without permission because there are things I can do to prevent that

As an HN reader, you're likely more tech-savvy than most. Others may not be as easily able to prevent tracking. Additionally, some of the things you may want to do to prevent tracking may break core functionality. For example, I discovered recently that the Parliament TV website doesn't work if you don't download jQuery from a Google CDN. It seems to me to be an unacceptable requirement that in order to access materials which are produced with tax-payer money and are documentary evidence of our democratic processes, I have to share information with third party companies.

> If you're concerned about data protection I'd argue you should be more concerned about [...]

This type of argument is not helpful. I am indeed concerned about the things that you mentioned, but that doesn't mean that I cannot ALSO be concerned about websites tracking me.

> the police stalk the public on social media to ensure we're not saying anything offensive

Is there something specific you're thinking of here? I'm fairly confident that it is perfectly legal to say things which are offensive on social media. Here's Lancashire police's take: https://www.lancashire.police.uk/faqs/online-safety/someone-.... The CPS also has published guidance on this topic, although it's a bit heavier: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/social-media-guideline...

> Given all of this why should I care if tesco.com has placed a tracking cookie on their site without my consent?

I'll refer you to the excellent explanation at https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/why-metadata-matters, but I would say that I'm a bit concerned that perhaps you don't really understand what the risk is here (or the technology at play).

Tracking cookies are placed on YOUR computer, not on a site. If you visit tesco.com, log in and do your online shopping, then Tesco might have a cookie set on your computer which contains your user ID. Now, you've finished your shopping, and you go to your local sex shop's website. Now, assuming there's a network request from the sex shop's site towards Tesco.com, they'll be able to see that user kypro accessed https://ilikebigbutts.com. Now, Tesco is not really a big threat here because there's no reason for Tesco to work with the sex shop, but companies like Google or Facebook encourage webmasters to include like buttons or tracking code for analytics etc. in order to gather this data and sell access to you to advertisers.

> not attending protests or other real-world events that my government may not approve of.

This for certain is especially worrying given the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. But I think this is called the fallacy of relative privation in formal terms - just because one thing is bad, and another relatively less bad, does not mean that the second thing is not also bad.