NEGATIVE - DISADVANTAGE — PRIVACY HURTS SECURITY — LAW ENFORCEMENT AND CRIME DAMAGED 204

PRIVACY TRADES OFF WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT

SECURITY TECHNOLOGY QUITE OFTEN HAS THE COST OF SERIOUS PRIVACY LOSS

John Carpenter Chicago Sun-Times January 01, 2000, SECTION: 21ST IMPRESSIONS; Pg. 36 TITLE: Protecting; Security, yes ... privacy, no // acs-EE2001

Technology surely will continue to revolutionize how we protect ourselves. But at what cost?

If on-board satellite systems will help us find the way, will they also help authorities -- from the police to our bosses -- find us?

If huge databases of criminal information will help law enforcement find the bad guys, will they also help law enforcement keep an eye on the bad guys, even if the bad guys aren't bad anymore?

And will they help computer hackers, insurance companies, potential employers, political enemies or just plain pains in the neck spy on us?

In other words, is the loss of privacy the price we'll have to pay to feel, and be, safe?

PRIVACY RIGHTS HINDER THE GOVERNMENT FROM PROTECTING INDIVIDUALS

Fred H. Cate, Brookings Institution, 1997; PRIVACY IN THE INFORMATION AGE, EE2001 -mfp p. 59

Fourth, the requirement that an expectation of privacy be "reasonable" fundamentally erodes the Fourth Amendment privacy right's usefulness as a way of protecting individuals against societal encroachment and diminishes its effectiveness in keeping pace with technological change. Am expectation is "reasonable" only if already accepted and shared by society. Schwartz and Reidenberg have challenged this definition as being "tautological" and have observed aptly that "this amendment applies only when society already awaits it. "Moreover, what the public views as "reasonable" tends to evolve far more slowly than information technologies. As a result, the Court evaluates privacy issues presented in the context of new technologies against measures of reasonableness that were formed without regard for those technologies. By the time society incorporates into its view of "reasonableness" the benefits and risks of a new technology, the Court is likely to have already decided one or more cases determining the applicable expectation of privacy based on the inapplicable measure of reasonableness. Society's views have evolved, but the precedent established by those cases is not likely to change.