WILL WE EVER GET OUR PRIVACY BACK?
In the first Supreme Court case making wiretapping Constitutional, Olmstead v. United States (1928), dissenting Justice Louis Brandeis prophetically warned: “The progress of science furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wiretapping. Ways may someday be developed by which the government—without removing papers from your secret drawers—can reproduce them in court. … Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual security?”
Under the Bush-Cheney Administration’s ever-expanding use of surveillance technology that pries into our telephone calls, e-mails, and bank and travel records, that question becomes more chilling every day. Nonetheless, I find my friends and family members unconcerned with vanishing privacy because, they say, “I have nothing to hide.”
The answer to that comes from privacy scholar Jim Harper of the Cato Institute, a civil liberties think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. “When people say they have nothing to hide, so they have nothing to worry about,” Harper says, “I ask them for their wallet and start to look through it. And they will blanch at that, if not refuse outright. And that puts a lie to the idea that people don’t want their own privacy. They do.”
Despite what Americans might want, the Bush Administration plans to use spy satellites to keep an unblinking eye on us. According to a report by AlterNet.org’s Tim Shorrock, the new National Applications Office creates “a legal mechanism that would make the United States one of the world’s most closely monitored nations.”
Down here on the ground, Big Brother is already marshalling new ways to track what we do at home behind so-called closed doors. On November 23, 2007, the Associated Press reported: “Firefighters in major cities are being trained to take on a new role as lookouts for terrorism. … Unlike police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel need no warrants to enter hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings each year—which puts them in a position to spot behavior that could indicate terror activity or planning.” (Emphasis added.)
Why worry about firefighters? Well, in my own city, New York, “they are told to be alert for a person who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States.”
Discontent? Are there copies of any of my HUSTLER columns lying about?
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has refused to review a San Diego County (California) policy that permits warrantless home searches of people on welfare to determine if they really qualify for government benefits. (Is that a new digital television set? How much did it cost you?)
How come no warrant is required? Because, explains David Savage of the Los Angeles Times, these suspicious inspectors “do not seek evidence of a crime.” They just want to be sure these people supposedly living on the edge should get welfare.
No matter who becomes President in the future or which party controls Congress, global terrorism will continue for decades, with an accompanying culture of fear and government surveillance in this country. Kids as well as adults, therefore, will grow up accustomed to being spied on.
The Rutherford Institute’s John Whitehead, a national town crier against Big Brother, reported on November 28, 2007, that “schools in Demarest, New Jersey, have installed surveillance cameras with live feeds to police headquarters.” And “Viewmont High School in Utah recently installed 36 cameras to provide school officials a bird’s-eye view of every square inch of the school’s hallways and common areas. ‘I can just simply scan through the school in less than a minute,’ boasts the school’s principal.”
Growing up knowing that you can be under the government’s gaze at any given time, how free will future citizens feel about engaging in public or private criticisms of their government?
No town or city is now immune from government privacy invaders. Two years ago in the small town of Loda, Illinois, the school board put videocameras in all school buses, but pledged there wouldn’t be any audio recordings because that would violate the state’s law against eavesdropping. Now the Illinois legislature has ruled that listening in—as well as watching—kids on school buses is not eavesdropping.
A parent I know in Loda—whom I will not name lest he or she get into trouble—asked me: “Is this policy legal under the Constitution? These kids have rights. I am disgusted at how easily people are willing to take children’s rights away, supposedly in the name of security. Where will this electronic intrusion stop?”
I told that apprehensive citizen to contact the Chicago chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Maybe a lawsuit will stop the Illinois legislature from continuing to violate those kids’ individual rights under the Constitution. After all, we still have a Bill of Rights in the Constitution, don’t we?
I remember during the Watergate hearings that sent President Richard Nixon back to private life, Senator Sam Ervin (D-North Carolina), head of the investigating committee, said: “When the government knows all of our secrets, we stand naked before official power. The Bill of Rights then becomes just so many words.”
Will enough Americans wake up and pound Congress while they still have some privacy left? Otherwise, Big Brother will be our constant companion.
Tags: Illegal Wiretapping, Nat Hentoff