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The United States has been conducting surveillance of its citizens since it was created, but the ability of any government to spy on its citizens has dramatically improved in the digital age. How should United States balance national security and personal privacy? Does the Constitution provide adequate protection against unrestricted government surveillance? What can advocates do to strengthen personal privacy rights? These concerns will only intensify in the years to come.
Anthony Gregory's new book <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0299308804/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0299308804&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=88f43e98245c09932f516c1eb8248040 American Surveillance: Intelligence, Privacy and the Fourth Amendment]</i> published by the [https://uwpress.wisc.edu/index.html University of Wisconsin Press] examines the history of surveillance in the United States and grapples with these problems. He examines what the role the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against illegal government searches and seizures has played in protecting Americans from government surveillance and how courts have frequently circumvented it. [https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5506.htm Daniel EllsburgEllsberg] has described Gregory's book as essential to "those who want to protect liberty, peace and justice, and who want to take the debate to the highest level, will find this book indispensable."
As a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, [http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=506 Gregory] is currently a Research Fellow at the [http://www.independent.org/ Independent Institute]. In addition to his work with the Institute, he been has written pieces published by <i>The Atlantic</i>, <i>Christian Science Monitor</i>, <i>Salon</i>, <i>Reason</i>, and many other publications. He is also the author of others, and authored <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107036437/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1107036437&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=5f711d818f8f22229edfa54064167e1c The Power of Habeas Corpus in America: From the King’s Prerogative to the War on Terror]</i> published by the Cambridge University Press.
Here is our interview with Anthony Gregory.
<b>The need for intelligence and the right to privacy are in opposition to each other. If you want to gather intelligence you will most likely have to violate personal privacy. Has the United States had difficulty balancing the desire to gather intelligence and the right personal privacy? Has this balance shifted over time?</b>
There is a tension, if not always an opposition, between privacy and intelligence. The government tends to strike a balance in favor of its policy goals and institutional interests. The balance has shifted over time, but in very complicated ways. Some of this is a product of the distinction between foreign and domestic theaters, which shifted radically when the United States began more regularly extending its power far beyond the continent. Sometimes domestic surveillance was seen as natural response to foreign threats that did not respect borders. A rocky path brought us to the global war on terror. I think some civil libertarians tend to exaggerate the trajectory as one toward diminishing privacy. In some ways, we had worse privacy violations before. In the nineteenth century, the government trampled communications privacy to stop abolitionist literature or material deemed obscene, including contraception information. In World War I and the Cold War, it was less safe to be a dissident. The technological capacity is far greater now, but given that things could be worse. That’s not a reason to be complacent.
<b>Your last book, <i>The Power of Habeas Corpus in America: From the King’s Prerogative to the War on Terror</i>, looked at the history of the legal principle of habeas corpus. Do you see any connection between the rights of habeas corpus and personal privacy?</b>
In terms of legal theory, protections against unlawful search, seizure, and detention are also complicated by the fact that they are both judicially constructed. Champions of such protections, particularly of the libertarian variety, want to see these legal rights as natural corollaries of some fundamental principles concerning person and property. On one level they can be—detention is a physical restriction on the body, and searches can target physical space and bodies—and yet the determination of whether a detention or search is “just” or “legal” quickly becomes a question of legal process, a process involving claims of legal authority, not just claims of right. It’s often unclear what the right answer is, because the law is written and interpreted by fallible people and is highly historically contingent. But even if we put all that aside, habeas corpus has often concerned disputes over civil rights beyond freedom from detention, and certainly the Fourth Amendment has come to protect rights that don’t correspond clearly to person or tangible property at all, but rather personal information.
In short, both my works have in common an attempt to look seriously closely at civil liberties issues that I take very seriously but that I think their champions (as well as detractors) have oftentimes gotten confused in both history and legal theory.
<b>Remarkably, the current presidential race has included almost no discussion of issues related to either surveillance or personal privacy. After all of the hand wringing that occurred after the Eric Snowden leaks does this omission surprise you? What would it take for this issue to become more important?</b>
