US Official Urges Americans To Reconsider Privacy

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information. "Protecting anonymity isn't a fight that can be won. Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that," said Kerr. Kurt Opsahl of the EFF said Kerr ignores the distinction between sacrificing protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily disclosing information in exchange for a service. "There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties. We shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy." Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, requiring a court order for surveillance on U.S. soil. The White House argued that the law was obstructing intelligence gathering.

Comments

I, for one...

[Grandiloquence]

I, for one, welcome the impending removal of our old tyrannical police-state masters. www.ronpaul2008.com

Re:I, for one...

[Cerebus]

Here's a great run-down of Ron Paul's Congressional whack-nuttery:

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/11/ron-pauls-record-in-congress.html

Re:Finding yourself in Google

[TheRequiem13]

Government provisions for socialized health care do not inherently sacrifice privacy. What gives you that idea? As long as the hospitals (etc) abide to patient confidentiality, and the government pays for these hospitals (etc) to operate, there's no issue.

This is really far from an "all or nothing" debate. That's what the government wants you to believe: that in order to provide you with services, security and safety, we need to be able to get into every facet of your life. Don't let them convince you that's how it has to be.

There are choices to be made about everything. The government can provide health care without access to specific patient information. They can provide security without reading your email and listening to your phone calls. Do not for a second believe that one comes with the other. We have choices.

Ninth Amendment is critical to modern 'privacy'

[Kadin2048]

Although it's true that the Ninth Amendment is sort of the red-headed stepchild of the Bill of Rights, it was invoked specifically by Justice Goldberg in his concurring opinion in the landmark case Griswold vs Connecticut, which basically established the unenumerated 'right to privacy' in the United States:

To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep-rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment and to give it no effect whatsoever. Moreover, a judicial construction that this fundamental right is not protected by the Constitution because it is not mentioned in explicit terms by one of the first eight amendments or elsewhere in the Constitution would violate the Ninth Amendment, which specifically states that "[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people...."

In determining which rights are fundamental, judges are not left at large to decide cases in light of their personal and private notions. Rather, they must look to the "traditions and [collective] conscience of our people" to determine whether a principle is "so rooted [there]...as to be ranked as fundamental."

This opinion was shared by Justices Brennan and Warren, as well. (And I would argue that it turned out to be far more significant than the Court's opinion written by Douglas, which mostly railed about the sanctity and social virtues of marriage and really didn't get into privacy generally.) Although Griswold took on only the rather narrow issue of contraception, and even that only between married couples, the reasoning therein was later applied to other realms.

So although the Ninth does get mentioned far more seldom than it should, its existence is critical and quite central to the current privacy debate. It has not been completely ignored.

If you're interested in reading a layman's introduction to the 'right to privacy' as it has developed through several major USSC cases, I might humbly suggest my own "Right to Privacy Primer" (text version) which I wrote a while back and recently updated.