Privacy & Surveillance - the Answer is Less Government
Bob Barr on: Privacy & Surveillance
Since the September 11th terrorist attacks, the government has asked or forced Americans to sacrifice their privacy rights in exchange for the promise of more security. In the face of relentless scare-mongering by the Bush Administration, the public — and most members of the Congress — has generally complied.
As a result, people can no longer reasonably assume their privacy or other civil liberties are secure from the government. The executive branch has illegally surveilled millions of telephone calls and e-mails. Neither emails nor even the records of library books that are checked out are now safe from the government’s prying eyes. These federal powers have been used all too often in creating a giant database of names and information on law-abiding American citizens — not the terrorists the Bush administration said it intended to track down.
We may not yet be in the nightmare world of George Orwell's classic novel “1984”, but time is fast running out for a society that values freedom and liberty. Certainly, the government must be able to confront crime and terrorism, but its powers must be limited to those truly necessary to protect Americans and which are consistent with the Constitution. Also, government officials must always be accountable for their actions.
The Fourth Amendment was designed for precisely this purpose — to protect Americans from illegal searches and seizures by the government. Yet the Bush administration, aided by many Congressional Democrats and Republicans, has worked to gut both constitutional and legal protections for the privacy rights and civil liberties of American citizens. The next administration must reverse course, demonstrating that it recognizes it is tasked to defend a free society not undermine it.
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