Safety or Privacy: New Technology Will Make Us Choose
If we are to understand this correctly, the choice is: “You can forever prevent nuclear terrorism, you just need to concede to the government all of your privacy and liberty.” This is nonsensical. The free market is not antithetical to our security. There is no need for this tracking system to be involuntarily institutionalized in every phone with every phone company. Somehow, someway, this benign government of ours has even managed to sour the sweet news of a world-changing anti-dirty bomb innovation. Simply amazing.
“The right to be let alone,” Louis D. Brandeis once said, was “the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” In 2010, that’s gone the way of the dinosaur. According to Declan McCullagh, “the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ in their — or at least their cell phones’ — whereabouts.” Ah, yes, no “reasonable expectation.” Ironically, the administration may have a point. Have we seen or heard any uproar that the federal government is even contemplating such an expansion of its power? Not really.
In Samson v. California (2006), the Supreme Court ruled that prison cells were not subject to Fourth Amendment protections. Should the feds be allowed to track our locations via cell phones, we are likewise denied those protections against unreasonable search and seizure. In effect, citizens would be put on par with criminals; there would be no discernible difference between the government’s respect for free people and for inmates. Not so, say the feds: “An individual has no Fourth Amendment-protected privacy interest in business records, such as cell-site usage information, that are kept, maintained and used by a cell phone company,” President Obama’s attorney argued.
Doesn’t the administration see the difference between customers making a personal choice to hand over sensitive information to a private entity on the one hand, and the federal government breaching the privacy of the entire population on the other? The former is a tradeoff we do nearly every day. It’s a little troubling, but at least individually avoidable and protected from violations by the judicial system. The latter is government encroachment more apt for an authoritarian police state.
What should citizens make of all this? We should embrace Purdue University’s work, but demand its implementation be under the auspices of the market in a consensual and voluntary manner. Nuclear terrorism is not a fantasy concocted by unhinged minds. While Mr. Obama hosts antiquated Cold War-style nuclear summits, championing “breakthroughs” like Mexico and Canada ridding themselves of small amounts of uranium, the real world remains unfazed and moves forward with its designs.
No. Can’t trust them not to abuse their power.
If TPTB cannot be trusted, it does not matter what the laws say;
The safety of citizens lies in _transparency_ ,in knowing what the State
does with its power, not trying to limit it with laws.
There’s a serious problem here that privacy advocates — and while I’m sympathetic to their desires, I must contradict their premise — must cope with sooner or later. The problem is this: Who owns the airwaves?
A cell phone is a radiating device. It’s non-directional; if it were otherwise, the system as designed and engineered wouldn’t work. But to emit a non-directional unencrypted signal in the electromagnetic spectrum is the same as standing in a public place and shouting at the top of your lungs — and who would dare to claim a “right of privacy” over that?
The government cannot be enjoined from collecting such signals on privacy grounds. If you want privacy against that sort of data collection, avoid cell phones entirely. If you trust law as a reliable constraint on the government’s actions, get a Constitutional amendment passed against government data collection other than expressly authorized by law. (Good luck.) In the meanwhile, turn yours off when you’re not using it. (I don’t own one and never will.) And quit whining about the undesired side effect of a technology you wholeheartedly embraced without understanding its implications.
When Unisex bathrooms were introduced, one woman commented that she had expected
to be embarrassed (heh heh) by the loss of privacy, but once she was in the stall
she realized she was anonymous.
Current Phone/Card systems are reasonably anonymous; If someone wants to eliminate
all chance of being identified/tracked while engaged in risky business, it is
easy enough to build that capability into the handset hardware.
Gee I thought you were going to ask me a hard question. The answer is NO!
Neither cell phone, nor satellite tracking technology are static.
Both advance, change and improve aligned with an exponential curve somewhat parallel to the market’s associated growth and profits.
GPS capability embedded inside cell phones can easily be defeated or, worse yet modified. For instance a GPS enabled cell phone modified so that it will activate (switch something on or off) when the cell phone is physically at a certain location.
The entire process will be passive, meaning no detectable, traceable signals exist in a simple device that provides extremely accurate pin point bombing capability. With enough explosive power to wipe out 10 city blocks or chemical warfare ingredients to take out the entire city, just drop the less than 1/4th pound thing into the local U.S. Postal box, U-Haul or Federal Express system and wave goodbye.
The unassailable truths about terrorists are: 1. We know who they are. 2. We know where they are. 3. We either kill them in their sleep first or that is what they will do to us.
This little government run cell phone project has nothing to do with citizen’s safety or fighting terrorism. For an uninformed public it is something that promises virtually unlimited government control and monitoring.
End of story.
The end point of the curve is where one individual can destroy the planet;
Somewhere well before we reach that point we need to be sure that nobody
will want to, or have access to the means, or at the very least, cannot
get us all at once.
Alfred Bester, in ‘The Stars my Destination’ posited a society which
built its cities as a sort of array of egg cartons: A Tactical Nuke
explosion would be contained within, and directed upward by, the
hollow in which it went off; Not an optimal solution.
Why exactly do they need information on whose phone it is for this radiation detection? Phones could simply be designed to send out the information sans identification information. In fact, why does it even have to be a phone, why not just use the cell phone infrastructure and allow patriots to buy unidentifiable, untraceable detectors with a hardwired sim card that uses almost no energy. See, giving up our rights is not needed for the benefit, but statist people invariably always see the need to reduce liberty in order to provide a benefit.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)
… …. …. Who will guard [us from] the guards.
Why cannot these hypothetical radiation detection devices be planted all over the city. To light poles, door ways, buses, taxis, trains, cross walks, coffee carts.
No need to involve the citizens cell phones.