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A Privacy Victory but the War is Still in Doubt

Congressman Bob Barr, June 25, 2001

An important ruling came down from the nation’s highest court recently; one that I hope will begin to reverse a very disturbing trend in our society -- the use of technology by government to invade the privacy of American citizens. Deciding by a 5-4 margin in a case from Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled the use of a thermal imaging device by police to detect heat coming from inside a private home constituted a search, and therefore required a warrant. While the facts of this particular case dealt with the growing of marijuana plants under heat lamps inside a house, the principles involved were far more important than the facts of the case. This case represented the much larger issue of Americans’ right to privacy under our Constitution.

In an era where police are using heat-sensing devices on private homes, government traffic cameras are being deployed at will to monitor citizens’ movements on our roads, and the federal government is deploying a system called “Carnivore” to read citizens’ e-mail, it was absolutely essential for the Supreme Court to finally draw a line in the sand.

Fighting crime and promoting the growth of technology are two areas in which government must play a role if our nation is to continue to grow and succeed. However, when these two priorities are combined, and the 4th Amendment ignored, serious and frightening abuses of power result. Our nation is at this point right now.

With the Supreme Court finding, that there are limits to the government’s use of technology to invade privacy, those of us who seek to protect and defend the 4th Amendment, must now apply this philosophy to other invasive government programs; such as the FBI’s Internet-snooping program, Carnivore. Developed ostensibly to fight and prevent crime, this computer system has the ability to sort through all e-mail correspondence between law-abiding American citizens traveling over any Internet service provider (ISP). Although current law requires the Department of Justice to obtain a court order before using Carnivore, the standard under which it is entitled to install Carnivore, is the lowest possible standard, and allows for no input from outside parties, including the ISP. Moreover, the government is free to look at whatever e-mail traffic it wants with no oversight at all. To this day, and despite requests made by Congress and public interest groups, the extent to which this system has been used by the government remains unclear.

Advances in technology that make crime-fighting more efficient should not also be used to destroy the last vestiges of privacy we have left. Even as the government speeds ahead with technology to read e-mails surreptitiously, it is developing the technology to peer into our cars on public roadways, and through the walls of our houses and our very clothing, to search for drugs or weapons; all without probable cause we’ve committed a crime.

21st century technology is on the verge of destroying our Bill of Rights. We’d better wake-up and stop that train before it’s too late.