25 June 18
“Where there is secrecy, corruption is never far behind”
Shipp
“Privacy,” an obsolete concept!
Last week, Supreme Court Chief Justice John G Roberts Jr, writing a majority opinion, said:
“We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information.”
This represents a major (but mostly meaningless) decision on “digital privacy” (which is mostly nonexistent).
Our government now generally needs a warrant to collect location data about customers of cellphone companies. This decision also has implications for other kinds of personal information held by third parties, including email and text messages, internet searches, as well as bank and credit-card records.
However, it was a narrow (5 to 4) decision, and it will doubtless be challenged (read that: “ignored”) by entrenched and insulated federal bureaucracies, who consider themselves “beyond inquiry.”
The term, “reasonable expectation of privacy,” so often used in the past by justices writing majority opinions, is now deceased, and has been for some time.
It is today completely “unreasonable” for any of us to expect any species of “privacy,” in any circumstance!
“Privacy?”
There is no such thing, so a “reasonable expectation” of it is an “imaginary concept!”
Most of us consider ourselves so “uninteresting,” and so far under the radar, that the foregoing is of scant concern.
But, let us not forget the way KGB for decades rounded-up “dissidents” for uttering even a single sentence (in private, or so they thought) that was interpreted as “counter-Revolutionary.”
And, the KGB relied on antiquated technology, by today’s standards, yet they “detained” (and ultimately murdered) millions of hapless Russians.
A friend put it this way:
“I have a great hard-drive backup strategy:
When I experience a HD failure, I’ll just file a FOI (Freedom of Information) inquiry, directed at NSA, seeking
NSA’s copy of my computer hard drive.
We know they already have it!”
/John
