Sunday, November 24, 2002

In the Name of Security

IN the spring of 2001, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist sounded an alarm.

"Technology now permits millions of important and confidential conversations to occur through a vast system of electronic networks," he wrote in a First Amendment case. "These advances, however, raise significant privacy concerns. We are placed in the uncomfortable position of not knowing who might have access to our personal and business e-mails, our medical and financial records, or our cordless and cellular telephone conversations."

From the Vietnam and Watergate era until Sept. 11, 2001, legal protection of privacy rights was moving in only one direction, with judges and legislators across the ideological spectrum working hard to create what is in many ways a new legal right.

"Before 9/11, the American concern with invasion of privacy was growing," said Rodney A. Smolla, a law professor at the University of Richmond. "The law of privacy was poised to absorb and reflect some of the public concern. It was about to become the new civil right."

Sept. 11 changed everything, and last week those changes came into sharper focus, suggesting that any comprehensive rethinking of the right to privacy will have to wait. On Monday, two federal appeals courts endorsed vastly expanded government intrusions into the private affairs of Americans, finding privacy interests less compelling than those of rooting out terrorists and child pornographers.

The Pentagon also attracted considerable attention this month for a proposed database of unprecedented scale to help in government antiterrorism efforts. It would collect every sort of information imaginable, including student grades, Internet activity and medical histories. The USA Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, also altered the balance between privacy and government power in countless ways.

Public opposition to greater government surveillance has been muted, even as many people continue to voice concerns about the commercial use of data about themselves. That dichotomy is a little hard to explain, given that intrusion by the government can be life-altering while most businesses can do little more than annoy people with phone calls at dinner time.
The answer, it appears, is that many people believe the government will invade only someone else's privacy. Privacy for me, they seem to be saying, but not for thee.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/24/weekinreview/24LIPT.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

No comments:

Post a Comment

con·cept