Intelligence Director: All your Privacy are Belong to Us

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Posted to Legal on Tue Nov 13, 2007 at 10:15:41 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee begins debate on potential changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Donald Kerr, argued for a change in the basic definition of privacy.

After revelations of the President's Warrantless Wiretapping program came out last year, Congress amended the 1978 FISA law to allow the government to listen in on communications where one party was believed to be outside of the United States (the original law required a court order, which the administration objected to saying it was outdated).

Mr. Kerr recently spoke about privacy in these changing times, and said that the basic definition of privacy has to be revised. People can no longer expect privacy to equate to anonymity due to the needs of national security. Instead, privacy should be an acknowledgment that "that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information." He further added that he found it odd that citizens complained about the government handling their data or listening in to private conversations "when [residents are] perfectly willing for a green-card holder at an [Internet service provider] who may or may have not have been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their data."

Kurt Opshal, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, disagrees saying Kerr ignores the distinction between sacrificing protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily disclosing information in exchange for a service.

 "Anonymity has been important since the Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms. The government has tremendous power: the police power, the ability to arrest, to detain, to take away rights. Tying together that someone has spoken out on an issue with their identity is a far more dangerous thing if it is the government that is trying to tie it together. There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties. We shouldn't have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy. It's just another 'trust us, we're the government.'"

It is not even certain a FISA revision bill will pass. President Bush has said he will veto any proposal which does not allow retroactive immunity for those telecommunications companies who illegally assisted the government in spying on its own citizens without a warrant. Proponents of the civil lawsuits say they are the only way to determine how broadly the warrantless spying program extended.