Weighing The Right To Privacy Against The Threat Of TerrorismEssay Preview: Weighing The Right To Privacy Against The Threat Of TerrorismReport this essayIntroductionBreathes there the man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said,This is my own, my native land!Whose heart hath neer within him burndAs home his footsteps he hath turnd,From wandering on a foreign strand?If such there breathe, go, mark him well;For him no minstrel raptures swell;High though his titles, proud his name,Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,–Despite those titles, power, and pelf,The wretch, concentred all in self,Living, shall forfeit fair renown,And, doubly dying, shall go downTo the vile dust, from whence he sprung,Unwept, unhonourd, and unsung.— “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” Sir Walter ScottThe excerpt from Scott’s poem above describes a traitor and it conveyed the concerns of the Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1949. After World War II, Russia’s strength and the fear of communism gripped the nation. The land of the free did not embrace socialism or communism and any political view outside of democracy threatened the stability of our country. The HUAC felt so strongly about the matter that they included the quote on the final page of a report titled, “Review of the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, arranged by the National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions.” Patriotism and nationalism are strong emotions that stir a society into action, both appropriate and inappropriate.
The concept of civil liberty often runs counter to the interests of national defense. The normal American has an understanding that the Constitution guarantees the right to certain freedoms, privacy being one of them. Contrary to that belief is the fact that the Constitution guarantees certain rights as long as those rights do not adversely affect the country’s interests or safety. Joe Public may have the freedom to have a shotgun but he does not have the right to own a bomb.
Throughout history, our government enacted measures to safeguard the nation against domestic and international terrorism and sedition. The intent behind suspending or reinterpreting personal rights inconvenienced a minority population for the greater good. Acceptance of monitoring the activities of the average citizen was achieved using the argument that law-abiding people have nothing to fear. The question about whether the monitoring was right or wrong was a question of patriotism. The same tones of dissent that fueled our country’s revolution fall silent in modern times out of fear. The fear of being unpatriotic or being labeled a “Red” or a “Hippie” put up obstacles to democracy. We suspended our ideal of fairness to combat a common enemy; during times of war, the task of winning public support has little resistance.
The ACLU of Washington issued a report (see here) stating the following:
Government officials did not do much to prevent, stop, or reverse the spread of radicalization and terrorism within the U.S.; their use of surveillance tools that might have had a disproportionate influence on the radicalization of individuals was a matter of public record. This is especially true as there is no compelling precedent for government agencies to have used such techniques to counter threats or to stop violent extremists.
Although this isn’t the first time that people have complained about privacy in the government, a growing number of those complaining (including me) are beginning to acknowledge the risks with the lack of privacy, which is why Congress should not keep tabs on U.S. and other nation-state surveillance agencies.
The ACLU’s report states that: “A 2013 Government Accountability Office report found that government surveillance of American citizens resulted in a decrease in U.S. and Canadian intelligence-gathering of terrorist activity and terrorist plots. In other words, if NSA intercepts your phones and records them, then the FBI searches you without any suspicion. The public has no compelling reason to believe that any of the government programs that helped to break the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks is ever lawful and lawful, and the NSA should be held to account if it violates this law. The Government has, therefore, been justified in pursuing some legal and political actions on legal grounds to curtail the collection and dissemination of our information, including in response to an explosive terrorist plot. This action is designed to safeguard us from terrorist actions and will not deter or deter other civil liberties protections from being eroded.”
The ACLU supports laws and policy to protect consumers from government surveillance of their personal privacy. As noted in the U.S. Patriot Act, all of our laws and policies govern the manner in which individual states enact laws governing privacy and freedom based on their own legal and constitutional obligations. In other words, these laws and policies can apply to people, organizations, and governments. And as a result, it is not surprising that those laws and policies should be treated as they are.
People who have no reason to believe that our laws or policies are always a threat do not have reason to believe that the government is collecting information about them, nor have they reason to believe that we ever are.
The ACLU says that without privacy in the law, the U.S. and other countries would remain unable to pursue any criminal acts in connection with activities that were justified in using technology to track people’s phone calls, text messages, web surfing behavior, or activities that were in furtherance of criminal activities.