The Right to Privacy Under Siege
The right to privacy -- the right to be let alone -- is the most cherished right among civilized peoples. It was the right that gave birth to the American Revolution in opposition to British writs of assistance authoring petty officials to rummage through homes in search of contraband goods. Anonymous speech is scrupulously protected by the First Amendment. Pseudonyms were used by the venerated authors of the Federalist Papers. Statesman Benjamin Franklin admonished, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
The right to privacy, however, has surrendered to the American empire's futile quest for a risk-free existence, i.e., former Vice President Dick Cheney's ill-starred 1% doctrine: Treat as an absolute certainty, like the force of gravity, any miniscule risk that satisfies a 1% threshold. The 1% doctrine has fueled an Orwellian surveillance state featuring dragnet surveillance of the entire population -- especially the "not yet guilty." The 40,000-strong, multibillion-dollar National Security Agency has dossiers on all of us as potential terrorists. The revelations of Edward Snowden were only the tip of the iceberg. The goal is to cow the population into silence and induce citizen docility to a Leviathan state.
The surveillance state is advertised as indispensable to the safety of citizens from international terrorist attacks. But as Justice Louis D. Brandeis warned in Olmstead v. United States:
"Experience should teach us to be more on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
The United States Census Bureau shared confidential information with the U.S. Secret Service during World War II to track down 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans and hold them in unconstitutional racist concentration camps. The probability of government abuse of private data is manifold what it was in World War II because of the emergence of AI. Some argue that Elon Musk and his callow musketeers have digitally "killed" hundreds of living human beings and brought havoc into their lives by recklessly brandishing AI. You could wake up tomorrow and receive a government email informing you of your death and ineligibility to vote or open a bank account.
All this is prologue to the inauguration of Real ID on May 7, some two decades after it was recommended by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. It has been sold as a pivotal safeguard against a reprise of 9/11. But if that were true, why wait two decades during which no new international terrorist attacks on the United States occurred before mandating compliance with Real ID? Moreover, the risk of an international terrorist attack sans Real ID is less than the risk of dying because of a falling vending machine. Isn't Real ID overkill?
We've seen this rodeo before in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amendments of 2004, the child of post-9/11 hysteria. Its provision for surveilling "lone wolf" suspected terrorists has never been used in 21 years. Credible evidence has never been forthcoming suggesting that Real ID would have thwarted 9/11.
The Fourth Amendment exalts liberty and the right to be let alone above absolute safety. Just as we require proof beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal prosecutions because we believe it is better that no innocent suffer than a guilty person go free, so the right of privacy pivots on the conviction that is better that we risk some crimes going unsolved or undeterred than live in a police state where liberty is crucified on a safety cross.
Real ID is another nail in the coffin of privacy. It is happening in plain view with no pushback.
Armstrong Williams is manager/sole owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast owner of the year. To find out more about him and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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