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Redefining ‘privacy’
According to Merriam-Webster.com, one definition of privacy is the ”freedom from unauthorized intrusion.” But depending on how things go on Capitol Hill with the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, that definition may have to change:
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people’s private communications and financial information.
I don’t think I even need to say more; that should be enough ammo to get discussion rolling.
Topic: Issues, WorldMagBlog
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back to top18 Comments to “Redefining ‘privacy’”
Well, at least we’re safe.
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Where do I sign up for the revolution? I’m slightly kidding. I don’t mean armed conflict, but I most certainly mean peaceful resistance.
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If they get to determine what is private and so protected, then privacy is really their’s isn’t it? It’s not mine.
The point at stake is simple: don’t go snooping without showing good cause to a judge. That shouldn’t be too hard, but apparently for the present administration, it is.
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The government can listen to my phone calls any time they like. I have nothing to hide.
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Anyone involved in normal, innocent conversation with people abroad has nothing to worry about if a n intelligence agency monitors foreign calls. Our anonymity is somewhat compromised but not really any vital privacy.
Michael McConnell, head of the C.I.A., has been emphatic that monitoring international phone calls between Islamic jihadists and anyone in America has produced a substantial amount of very valuable intelligence.
People need to realize we are involved in a very real war with these jihadists, making it necessary to make a compromise regarding previous privileges of anonymity.
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The difficulty with Solon’s and John M’s view is that both presume a certain purity of motive from the government. But if purity of motive were a given, then the laws regulating such behavior would not be needed.
We put laws asking for limits on governmental power to search precisely because we know the human frailty of the people who work for government. The tool we make available in one circumstance then gets used elsewhere. Improper surveillance can result in theft of business secrets, the access to privileged personal communication (and so of scandal), or to the trolling for other potential law-breaking, however innocent, on our part. Oh, there’s a lot of mischief that can be done here.
Because we know human nature, we understand how unfettered power can be abused. That is why we ask that reasonable oversight by a third party exist. Mere say-so from the participant cannot do (ask any parent of a teenager).
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Even though I voted for Bush and generally believe he personally has good intentions, there some things that have really bugged me in this “War on Terror” and related subsequent policies that have made me less than enthusiastic of the current administration. I’m not a Bush-basher by any means (talk about some seriously boring people with nothing else on their minds!), but there are some things I cannot accept:
1. When no WMDs were found in Iraq, meaning that even if we had real justification for being there, it couldn’t be proved. The intelligence failings that were exposed thereafter only made the whole thing look worse and worse.
2. The torture episodes and such. Why should we stoop to a terrorist’s level?
3. The continuing erosion of privacy as protected in the Bill of Rights.
I have nothing to hide. However, I do have the right granted to me as an American citizen to hide it from search and seizure, excepting of course *reasonable* suspicion like that needed for search warrants. But the government should not issue itself a search warrant for the entire population just because it is convenient to do so. It may be pragmatic, but it is not constitutional.
Do I care persoanlly? No. I feel relatively safe and am not really afraid if the government or most businesses know what I’m up to. But from the principle of the thing, I believe a line is being crossed that sets a bad precedent. If this is privacy in our day, what will it be like for our children? Will we simply and easily remove the Fourth Amendment in 30 years because no one ever tries to enforce it anymore?
Many people of my generation have given up on privacy, saying that privacy is just an illusion anyway. Apparently that’s the main reason (other than being drunk out of their minds) that so many people post embarrasing pictures of themselves on the Internet.
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“Torture”, “Privacy”… I wonder what they’ll redefine next.
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Americans are slowly, but surely, giving up their freedom (including privacy) in exchange for a promise of safety. As someone far more eloquent than I said, in the end we will have neither.
If there is one thing I fault the conservatives for, it’s their willingness to subvert individual freedoms for the power of the state. Once you start down that road, there is no turning back.
It will be interesting to see how enthusiastic the conservatives are for this kind of thing when a Democratic President sits in the White House.
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The word ‘martyr’ has gotten a make-over. Blowing one’s self up in the name of that peaceful religion is now deemed an act of martyrdom.
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Another 9/11 or two with a small nuclear weapon or lethal chemical/biological weapon might just wake people up to the reality of what these Islamic jihadists are seriously intend.
Meanwhile the paranoid rubes blather on.
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#9 Anlir,
Although in this case (Bush administration) you are correct, I’d suggest that in principle, conservatives are *usually* in favor of limited government to a greater extent than liberals, who *usuually* tend to want the government to do more for the citizens. There are exceptions of course, this being one of them, but there are also some conservatives that feel that the current administration betrayed some principles of conservativism.
When urgent zeal to protect citizens along with a hazy meaning of the word “patriotism” conflicts with some otherwise typical conservitive values, the end result is something that many citizens of both right and left persuasions reject and do not call their own.
In scenarios like this some words lose meaning. Does “patriotism” mean standing up for people or for principles? Is spying on citizens the best way to “protect” them? In this context, “right” and “left” don’t always mean as much as it used to mean. Quick slap-on labels like these are shown to be pale stereotypes of the subtle nature of people’s actual beliefs.
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Zanzibar is right on in his first post. As for conservatives, well, true conservatives oppose this administration both on the war and on its unchecked federal spending which has led to a $9 trillion debt and a dollar about as weak as the peso.
I am a patriot because I stand up for the principles this country was founded on. If this country won’t stand for those princples why should I defend her? How can I not oppose her? America is ceasing to be America for me.
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More newspeak from the most Orwellian administration America has ever suffered under. Privacy now means exactly the opposite of privacy — that government and businesses (?!!?) have access to your personal correspondence information, but promise to “properly safeguard” it. What? Who do they think they’re safeguarding it from? The Bill of Rights correctly saw that the organization most likely to impinge upon our privacy was the government itself:
The Founders’ idea wasn’t that identity thieves or unscrupulous telemarketers were out to get you — it was that your private correspondence and information is your own business and government has no right to it unless probable cause has been given and a specific warrant has been written.
Without bitterness, I want to suggest that the attitudes espoused by some on this thread — that we should surrender our civil liberties to government in exchange for promises of safety, that honest people have nothing to hide from government — are frankly un-American. America was founded on the concepts of unalienable individual liberties and limited government. If these are no longer important to you, if you would fearfully surrendering power to a monolithic government and live under its auspices, then you are not holding to an American system of government. You are grasping for a fascist government, and hoping it will be benevolent.
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Exactly, JJF. My ‘at least we’re safe’ comment was sarcasm.
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Who trust government or corporations enough to sacrifice their rights and freedoms to them, in exchange for a promise of safety?
I can see it now – some day the government will tell us that in order to safeguard our “privacy” they will need to install a camera in everyone’s home. The government will, of course, outsource the right to “privacy” to a corporation, who will monitor our every move. Conservatives will applaud this because it will give giant contracts to their buddies in the corporate world.
And everyone will live happily ever after in safety.
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Canada accepting American refugees since 1776; just be sure to avoid the cameras and retina scans on the way out.
John, Solon et al, Hilary thanks you in advance as do her business partners for any information you have forfeited.
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When liberals are in power, conservatives are the “paranoid rubes.”
When conservatives are in power, liberals are the “paranoid rubes.”
The bread is buttered on both sides.
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