THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY

WHAT IS THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY?

The right to privacy is not mentioned in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has said that several of the amendments create this right.  One of the amendments is the Fourth Amendment, which stops the police and other government agents from searching us or our property without "probable cause" to believe that we have committed a crime.

Our government has now decided that the emails and web surfing history of private sector employees will be subject to government scans.   In other words, the feds have just declared they can read the content of your emails and gain access to your information, without a warrant—without probable cause, but rather, just because they want to.
 
I read just the other day that our federal government is now testing a device that allows them to track and monitor Bluetooth transmissions.  (For those of you with no technical knowledge, that has nothing to do with dentistry)
 
Our rights and our privacy are being eroded by an administration that claims everything is a threat, everything is an emergency, everything is so terrible that the federal government must step in and help.  A lot of it being done by executive order, but congress is guilty as well.   I agree the government needs this right when there is just cause, but a warrant should always be required.

The latest intrusion comes from Obama’s cybersecurity executive order, which was an offshoot of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) that Congress refused to pass.  Obama took matters into his own hands (imagine that) and issued an executive order with most of CISPA’s language in it, the very language that Congress didn’t want to pass because it interfered with the privacy of American citizens. 

Government workers and Defense Department contractors are used to having their Internet traffic scanned because they were likely targets of espionage.  But now Obama has declared many private sector businesses to be under threat, as well, including banks, utilities and transportation companies.  If you work in one of these industries or send emails to someone who does, your transmissions will be recorded and viewed by companies who have received security clearance from the DHS. 

Congress is grappling with the issue of online privacy as President Obama and various agencies clamor for more access.  The Senate is currently debating whether to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) that was passed in 1986.  Some Members of Congress want to require the government to have a search warrant if they want to read old emails stored with third-party providers; but the Justice Department, law enforcement and investigators are pushing for open access. 

Law enforcement groups and the Justice Department also want wireless companies to retain your text messages for at least two years so they can access that information later, if they so choose.  And law enforcement is fighting to obtain a “traceable” database of your license plate information. 

Drones are flying through the sky and nearly everything you do is monitored by the government and can later be used against you: Welcome to George Orwell’s 1984. 

Obama has already declared that he can assassinate American citizens or detain them indefinitely based on a threat, now he is claiming ownership of your personal information.  You can be searched without cause and convicted without a trial—all because Obama has decreed it so. 

This is in direct violation of your Fourth Amendment rights, which are supposed to keep you "secure" and give you protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was asked about the NYPD using domestic drones in the city.  Bloomberg’s replied “We’re just going into a different world.  Uncharted,” he said.  “Like it or not, what people can do, or governments can do, is different and you can to some extent control [it], but you can’t keep the tides from coming in.  We’re going to have more visibility and less privacy.  I don’t see how you stop that.”    “It’s not a question of whether I think it’s good or bad, I just don’t see how you can stop that because we’re going to have them.”

One has to wonder why the nanny-state mayor who thinks he can control the size of your sodas, overrule the 2nd Amendment, and eliminate cigarette displays in public, doesn’t see any way to prevent the NYPD from watching you via domestic drones?

Have a nice day.  Oh, and for the government agent reading this, you have a nice day as well.