The Death of Privacy: Good or Bad?

[Buffy]

The US Constitution does not have an explicit "right to privacy" and many Western governments have even lesser protections, although there is a traditional right inferred by many Western cultures. Some extreme liberal states like California have enshrined an explicit right to privacy, and even without an explicit right, US Constitutional law has for the most part affirmed that it is implied by prohibitions against "unreasonable search and seizure" and "self-incrimination" and has been used in support of--but importantly not as the sole basis of--decisions allowing interracial marriage and abortion. Culturally, there are many traditions that can be summed up by the idiom "a man's home is his castle."

 

As an evolving legal practice, government denial of a right to privacy has been promoted almost exclusively under the argument that it allows individuals to inflict harm on society by making it easy to hide transgretions ranging all the way from consumption of illegal substances to committing acts of terrorism.

 

The real motivation for this thread is to try to discuss the ramifications of the current US administrations use of one extreme of this range to provide justification for eliminating privacy restrictions for just about any purpose.

 

According to a recent episode the PBS program NOW that the US government is currently reading and storing virutually every e-mail sent within the US, and is using it actively not just for "the war on terror" but for mundane business fraud. Some of the key facts that have been uncovered--very nicely summarized in this post on Texas Kaos--include:

• The government is intercepting most emails sent domestically.
  
• AT&T is collecting most emails and sharing them with the government, specifically the NSA (this is backed up by Klein's documents).
  
• The NSA spy room at AT&T's San Francisco facility is only accessible to the NSA and AT&T employees cleared by the NSA
  
• The NSA's interest seems to be in MAE WEST, *the* major hub of American and international internet traffic on the West Coast
  
• The device installed in San Francisco is capable of intercepting 10 GIGBYTES of data per second. In layman's terms, that means it could go through all the information in all the books in the Library of Congress in 15 minutes.

While the government is on record as having "stopped but not defunded" the Total Information Awareness program that blew up over a year ago, and even the President has been goaded into denying it:

We're not mining, or trolling, through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.

the government has used information obtained from Yahoo without warrant to prosecute Steve Warshak--owner of the Enzyte company with those annoying Smiling Bob commercials--for false advertising.

 

Its notable of course that although there have been vague statements that "terror has been stopped" because of surveillance--only "of communications with foreign terrorists"-- there has been no publicized prosecution of anyone on this basis to date for terrorist activities. Of course even the flimsiest of cases like the "Dirty Bomber" Jose Padilla and the Florida al Queda terrorist cell--which the government falls all overthemselves to publicize--do not rely on this evidence.

 

So the question becomes: are we willing to give up this right of privacy--specifically granted in California and implicit in many other places--for vague--and at this point entirely unproven--promises of greater security, when it is so easily used by less than virtuous individuals in government?

 

Under this same argument, there should be registration of all guns--or to make it easier for folks: the government right to use any means necessary to build a database of all guns owned by everyone using surreptitious techniques--so this is not really a "liberal" argument. Indeed, some very politically liberal but pro-business folks have gone on record saying that the game's over:Sun's former CEO Scott McNealy said "You have zero privacy anyway, get over it.".

 

Dive in folks.

 

Its not just for liberals any more,

Buffy

[infamous]

 

So the question becomes: are we willing to give up this right of privacy--specifically granted in California and implicit in many other places--for vague--and at this point entirely unproven--promises of greater security, when it is so easily used by less than virtuous individuals in government?

 

 

Its not just for liberals any more,

Buffy

Excellent topic for discussion Buffy. And as for myself, I personally am not willing to surrender any of the freedoms for which our founding fathers fought so hard to aquire for the American citizenry. By and large I view the Patriot Act to be one of the grossest infringements of our personal freedoms since the nation was founded.

 

Another issue thats been at the forefront of my concern over the present administration is the so-called Real ID Act. By May of 2008, just 15 months from now, every citizen is going to be required to take a national ID card. Without it, you will not be able to enter a federal building, drive a car, have a bank account, take passage on a bus, plane, or ship, and very possibly, not be able to hold a job. I'm certainly not ready for the government to invoke such a degree of contol over my life.

 

If the American citizen is not successful in overturning this legislation, I believe this single act will result in the greatest loss of freedom Americans have ever faced. As we speak, there are fortunately, 34 states considering opposition to this new law. Hopefully, we can look forward to the defeat of this terrible law.....................................Infy