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Jeremy Steele
CST 373
10/15/2014
Post-9/11 Privacy Paper

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On September 11 2001, there was a terrorist attack on the World Trade

Center in New York City. Soon after the American people would have their privacy
attacked, not by any foreign power but domestic. Soon following the terrorist
attack the USA PATRIOT Act was passed that would directly attack personal privacy
of American citizens and immigrants. This led to wide resentment of the Act seeing
it as an invasion of privacy, something many Americans feel deeply about. Privacy
can be the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information
about oneself and express only selective parts. With the PATRIOT Act the people
could not exactly choose what was expressed to the government and what wasnt.
My personal concept of privacy is along the same line, being able to seclude
myself from others for a time, keeping select information to myself and only let
known what I want to be known publicly. This extends to material as well, wanting
to be able to keep the object from others, this has become especially important in
the digital age as most people have most of their information on their phones or
computers.
The ability to keep select information is the same as keeping a secret. There
are certain things people do not need to know about another and this extends to
the government, there are some things the government does not need to know
about an individual. This does not extend to all information but just some select

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information. There is always some information that must be shared publicly or

even to select groups. The keeping select object away from others is a form of
protection of personal privacy/personal property. It was given in the bill of rights
(billofrightsinsitute) that people have the right to personal privacy and I feel this
should extend to personal objects as well. In the technological age most people
have smart phones and keep every aspect about them on it, most people feel they
would be lost without their smart phone. I know for myself when someone uses my
laptop or phone I get very uneasy, knowing there is a lot of personal information
on those devices not only about myself but about people I know.
Lastly the ability to seclude oneself, it means private time a time away from
others where it is just yourself essentially. This can extend to a place where the
person feels most comfortable alone, for me it is my room in which I will seclude
myself from others when I want time alone to think, work or just to wind down
from the long time. When my personally place is invaded I feel extremely
disturbed, for it was my place where I can truly be myself and do whatever I wish
without judging eyes. This is the sum of my personal view on privacy, but it doesnt
reflect how our privacys have changed due to the Patriot Act. There must be an
examination of the pros and cons brought on by this act and finding out if the
pros out ways the cons to see if it follows Etzionis saying Privacy is to be treated

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as a value that needs to be balanced with concerns for the common good, and the
question of which of these two needs shoring up depends on the sociohitorical
context (Etzioni, p. 200). This plainly means we must find a proper balance
between privacy and the common good. This is a hot issue in todays world, with
the Patriot Act pushing for extreme supervision essentially destroying privacy in the
name of common good. The way it is justified is that with the lack of privacy the
government could easily monitor and stop threats such as terrorist attacks. But
with this the citizens become alienated from the government. But you cant do the
other extreme as well, if we had absolute privacy with no security crime would sky
rocket both foreign and domestic attacks could happen with no way of prevention.
So as Etzioni states in his book is we must find a good balance, how much privacy
should we keep without leaving the common good at risk, and how much privacy
can we willingly or reasonable surrender for the common good without the citizens
feeling betrayed or spied upon.
One of the ways privacy is being intruded upon in the current digital age is
through the use of data mining. This is when search engines gather the information
of every search ever made by a person. The information can be used for the
purpose of tracking search trends and learning about how most people use the
internet as said in Tancers book Click. The use of data mining seems to be ignored

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for it is supposed to be anonymous making it so you can discern which person in

particular is searching what but is a bulk collection of just the search history but
even with this any information over the internet can be traced to reveal the
original persons identity. This was extended to the PATRIOT Act when the
government forced yahoo to give over all their data mined information. While
Yahoo originally resisted they were later forced to comply sending all the mined
data from their searches over to the National Security Agencys Prism electronic
surveillance program (Strohm). Even thou the government is not allowed to data
mine them under the Bill of Rights Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants
shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized. U.S. Constitution
This means while the government cant data mine for our information, this did not
stop them from forcing third parties that can data mine to hand over there
information for analysis. Or through the Patriot Act, will allow for data mining and
wire-tapping without the need of a warrant.

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There are also things called cookies along with other tracking programs or addons that will monitor every click one makes on the internet, some of them being
malicious leading to identity theft and fraud, the compiling and selling of peoples
personal information without that persons knowledge. Even with all the powers
given to the government for unwarranted searches and data mining, third-party
digital thieves still run ramped ruining lives still (ACLU). This would allow the
government to create laws and databases which would be aimed at the ability to
combat and prevent third-party mining. This goes back to Etzionis privacy versus
common good. The government will be allowed to more effectively combat
identity theft and fraud; it also allows the government to tear a bit more of our
personal privacy away to do so. It is hard to see the balance, because the
government diving deeper into our privacy is something more immediate so the
populace feels and reacts to it. While only those who have been actually affected
by identity theft or fraud are the ones to truly speak out about how it actually
ruined their lives while the government prying into our privacy makes us feel
uneasy about our privacy being targeted.
If we take these issues back to earlier generations, such as the beginning of
our nation, we would have a totally different view on this all together. Before the
American Revolution there was tensions growing between the Colonies and the

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British Empire, one such tension came directly from the stripping of privacy. The
Writs of Assistance was a warrant issued by the British to officials in the Colonies
authorizing them to search any house for smuggled goods. The warrants did not
specify which house or what goods to search for allowed officials to confiscate
anything they feel was obtained in illegal means without any proof or reasoning
(Alchin). This became a major grievance for the colonies and is the main reason for
Amendment IV of the Bill of Rights. One can take this as that privacy was an issue
that led the American Revolution. Easy to say the Founding Fathers would hold
privacy in a high regard in our nation.
In the 1940s during the Second World War, the government called upon its
citizens to support the war effort, this included rationing, civil defense drills, work,
government handling schedules, which ultimately grew to the loss of privacy and
personal time(Duis). While this would not be an ideal situation for the American
Citizens they helped and did their part for it was to support the troops in the field.
But after the war ended there was a return to the home movement which was a
focus on regaining of personal freedoms one of which was privacy. This movement
extended to equal rights for African Americans as well as women, who both had to
pick up the work while many of the males where off fighting in the war. There was
more that happened in that generation, specifically the Japanese-American

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Internment camps. During the war President Roosevelt signed an order forcing the
relocation of all Americans of Japanese ancestry to concentration camps located
towards the interior of the United States. While during the war the Supreme Court
said the order was necessary in wartime even though most of the intern where
born in the U.S. never even of gone to Japan once in their life. It wasnt until 1988
that Congress would apologize and rewarded each surviving intern with
$20,000(ushistory.org). This is privacy being taken away to the extreme, the
relocating of people away from their homes, alienating them from the population
they are being separated from kept under armed guard and seen as possible
hostiles. This is the extent the American Government has already reached in the
pass extremely removal of privacy. In the end they knew it was wrong, why else
would they try to pay money to survivors, if people truly believed it was the right
call there would be no need for an apology, but since there was once it is a clear
sign that there was action taken too far. This was a case of stripping all privacy for
the sake of the common good, yet there was no good that came from it. All this
action taken for the sake of the common good did nothing but alienate our own
citizens against each other and spend resources that would have been much
needed for the war on stripping privacy and lives away.

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Compared to some other countries the U.S. privacy laws are not too bad.
The United Kingdom which signed up for the EUs Data Retention Directive that
requires all ISPs to retain personal data of the personal data of their customers for
at least one year after you cancel your subscription.(Kugler) The Data Retention
Directive would make it so operators to retain certain categories of traffic and
location data (excluding the content of those communications) for a period
between six months and two years and to make them available, on request, to law
enforcement authorities(Data Retention). This means in the UK and EU everything
you do on the internet must be recorded and kept on file from six months to two
years.
China goes on and makes it so online they track you even more from your IP
determine the identity of your Internet Service Provider, your operating system,
and the type of browser software you are using to access the site.(Privacy-policy)
It goes on that the Government there tracks its citizens regularly, especially those
who speak out against the Government. This leads to underground movements in
China with its citizens using the internet anomalously to try and post blogs
speaking against the government.
Overall while the U.S. Government is doing a good job breaking into our
privacy there are still plenty of other Countries that have it worse than us. While

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past generations may believe we are worse off since then seeing we went to war
for independence partially over privacy. It being so much of importance it was the
fourth amendment in the United States Bill of Rights. Then we relapsed in the
wakes of WWII sacrificing personal freedoms to help with the war effort and at the
same time completely taking the privacy and freedom of Japanese Americans
forcing them into internment camps. Soon after of course we tried to revert what
has happened, with the return to home movement trying to bring back the
domestic lifestyle with privacy. As well as the U.S. Government trying to make
amends with survivors of the internment camps by paying up $20,000 dollars each.
All of this that has been over all had a sense of Etzionis balance, before the
revolution all privacy was taken away for the common good, mainly the common
good was for Brittan but could have been beneficial for the colonies if they were
completely submissive. The problem is humans arent exactly submissive by
nature, so in the case of the colonial citizens having privacy stripped away led to
the revolutionary war. The history of the U.S. is full of going extreme to one side of
Etzionis balance, always on the side of common good by stripping privacy away.
The same happened in WWII privacy was stripped away for the common good.
Always a sway towards the common good is later corrected with a new movement.
As America sways again towards striping away privacy in name of common good

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how far will the country keep leaning towards this, in which part will it end and
what will be the correction we make.

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ACLU. (2008). National Security Letters. ACLU. Retrieved 9/20/14 from

https://www.aclu.org/national-security-technology-and-liberty/nationalsecurity-letters

Alchin, L. Writs of Assistance , landofthebrave.com

http://www.landofthebrave.info/writs-of-assistance.htm

Amitai, E. (1999). The Limits of Privacy. Basic Books, New York. Print.

Bill-of rights, billofrightsinstutute.org Retrieved 10/11/14 from

http://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/bill-of-rights/

Data retention, Europa.eu, Retrieved on 10/14/14 from

http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/policecooperation/data-retention/index_en.htm

Duis, P. (1996). No time for privacy: World war ii and chicago's families. The War in
American Culture, 17-45.

Kugler, D. Governments and online privacy: Who are the worst offenders?, IVPN,
Retrieved on 10/12/14 from: https://www.ivpn.net/blog/governments-andonline-privacy-who-are-the-worst-offenders

Privacy-policy, lehmanlaw.com Retrieved on 10/14/14 from

http://www.lehmanlaw.com/privacy-policy.html

Strohm, C. (2014) Yahoo Faced $250,000-Day Fine for Not Giving U.S. Data

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Bloomberg.com Retrieved 9/20/14 from

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-11/yahoo-faced-250-000-day-finefor-not-giving-u-s-its-user-data.html?cmpid=yhoo

Tancer, B. (2008). Click. Hyperion, New York. Print.

51e.asp, ushistory.org, Retrrieved on 10/13/14 from
http://www.ushistory.org/us/51e.asp