| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
08 Oct 2004 10:41:36 PM |
| Object: |
Losing Liberty |
http://www.detnews.com/2003/specialreport/0306/24/a18-198790.htm
Sunday, June 22, 2003
Losing Liberty: Privacy
Forfeiting Privacy Will Destroy the Essence of America
Allowing more government snooping into personal lives will reduce
freedom without making nation more secure
By The Detroit News
Privacy, cherished by Americans as essential to the pursuit of
happiness, is giving way to technological leaps and societal paranoia.
Soon, your business will be everybody's business.
Eavesdroppers are intercepting our most intimate conversations. Our
shopping and entertainment habits are meticulously tracked and stored
in massive marketing databases. Cameras watch us in almost every
public place.
The convergence of technology and the war on terrorism is stripping
Americans of the basic right to keep our habits and routines properly
veiled. And unless we stand up against legislation that will give the
government even more power to pry into the crannies of our personal
lives, the right to be left alone will disappear.
All-out efforts to win the wars on terrorism and drugs have caused
government to overreach into the private lives of citizens. Federal
agents are co-opting travel records, credit references, library files
and vast quantities of other personal data.
The FBI last year even vacuumed up files on hundreds of scuba divers
because of the potential for underwater bombing.
And the federal government, under the proposed Patriot Act II, now
wants even more power to rummage through business and marketing
databases never intended as law enforcement tools.
Overall, the country is cruising toward a Big Brother scenario that
novelist George Orwell imagined only as farfetched fiction.
Some courts are going along with plans to crimp privacy and other
liberties. They're willing to trade rights for security.
But there's no point in winning the terror war, or the war on drugs,
if the tactics employed make Americans less free and their private
lives more exposed.
Privacy versus security
The battering of privacy began years ago when the war on drugs made a
sharp philosophical turn: It traded rights and liberties for the hope
of reducing a heinous crime.
The war failed. Drugs and crime are unchecked. But the invasions of
privacy continue, including required urine tests in many workplaces, a
severe loosening of standards for search warrants and wiretaps, and
other measures that treat all citizens as presumed or potential drug
users.
The drug war established the model for the terrorism war. Since 9-11,
the government has demanded greater ability to snoop without making a
convincing case that the new powers will deter terror or won't be
abused.
At times, the overzealousness of investigators takes on a Keystone
Cops quality. In recent months, several men named David Nelson wound
up on a government list to be pulled off airplanes around the country
and questioned in a suspected terrorism plot.
Among those flagged was the most famous David Nelson -- son of TV's
Ozzie and Harriet. The government blamed a computer glitch.
Critics of the new intrusiveness say existing laws are adequate to
keep America secure -- if they are competently executed.
"When I look at what the government is seeking to acquire in terms of
new powers for the Patriot Act and now the Son of Patriot Act, it
worries the dickens out of me for a couple of reasons," says Bob Barr,
a former GOP congressman from Georgia and now a privacy expert at the
American Conservative Union in Alexandria, Va.
"I don't think that the terrorists were able to do what they did on
9-11 because the government didn't have enough power. We were asleep
at the switch. We didn't use the powers we had. The terrorists were
lucky. They were smart. And they were able to identify weaknesses in
how our government operated."
Barr, a conservative, is no pushover. And in upholding privacy, he's
part of bipartisan alarm sounded by both liberal and conservative
groups.
Database dangers
The federal government has breathtaking data collection plans,
including the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system, which will
coordinate vast arrays of digitized information from private companies
and elsewhere.
TIA is so comprehensive that the Orwellian title was changed to
Terrorism Information Awareness in an unsuccessful attempt to allay
fears.
Personal information has always been available to the government, of
course, both legally and otherwise. But new, powerful computers
dramatically change the game, making it easy to collect and analyze
habits. If you buy gas on credit at a station on Opdyke Road in
Oakland County, for example, you leave a paper trail of the time and
place. Ditto for purchases at a drug store in Livonia or a Radio Shack
in Sterling Heights.
The data is available to a determined government all too willing to
seize the technological moment and collect information on people
suspected of doing nothing wrong.
Last year, for example, the FBI gathered information on thousands of
scuba divers. The agency theorized that terrorists might try to plant
explosives under bridges. No plots were uncovered. But the government
had a file on the divers, who couldn't examine the information for
accuracy or have it expunged. They had no say in whether the records
were turned over to other parties.
And that raises one of the major threats to privacy: little control
over personal information, whether collected by government or
marketing companies. The very nature of computers creates
opportunities for unreasonable government searches not imagined by the
Founding Fathers and still not adequately restricted by privacy law.
Librarians, for instance, are up in arms over renewed efforts to look
at records of what books people check out. A patron checking out books
on terrorism -- just to stay informed on the matter -- might
unknowingly turn up on a government list along with scuba divers.
The right to privacy is not directly addressed by the Constitution.
But Americans derive their notion of it from the Fourth Amendment,
designed to limit government's intrusion into their lives. By limiting
unwarranted government meddling, Americans deduce a right to be left
alone.
It's our business
Government access to personal information can lead to abuses, no
matter the party in power. The Nixon administration was infamous for
its enemies list. The Clinton White House improperly collected FBI
files on many people, including Republican opponents. For years, the
FBI tracked and kept files on Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil
rights activists. And the Michigan State Police once kept records on
suspected communists, information that had little value in criminal
cases but which could have been used politically.
Today, the government is getting considerable help in gathering
information on citizens from private institutions like banks and
credit card companies, on-line retailers and even video rental
outlets.
"In the same way the Bill of Rights protects us against government, I
wouldn't mind seeing stipulations that government cannot get hold of
private sector data bases without a warrant," says Clyde Wayne Crews
Jr., director of technology at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think
tank in Washington, D.C.
What's going on is an attempt by the government to catch a few fish by
casting a wide net. Pry open everyone's closet and you're bound to
find in a few of them the dangers you seek. But turning America into a
surveiled society, coercing good behavior through constant monitoring,
cracking into the secret places of innocent civilians, runs counter to
the essence of this nation.
It can't go any further if the country is to remain commited to the
basic values of personal freedom.
Americans must be more willing to say, "That's my business," even when
it's the government asking the questions.
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Vote for Bush. Why vote for the lesser of two evils?
No matter the candidates the superstition industry wins.
'Jesus' is a sock-puppet Christians utilize to add 'authority' to
whatever action they intend on taking. -Stoney
.
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