Page 120 - Privacy in a Cyber Age Policy and Practice

108 PRIVACY IN A CYBER AGE

Nixon and Scarlet Letter effects are clearly troubling, and one must discuss
how to curb and deter them. The status of a newly minted right by privacy
advocates—the right to be forgotten—is much less clear, because evidence
shows that erasing the past much more often leads to people who abuse
children, failures to revoke the medical licenses of alcoholic and addict
doctors who have killed patients, and con artists to abuse the elderly. 32
The question of using personal information to find criminals rather
than terrorists raises a serious question of balance. On the one hand, there
is reason to hold that the extraordinary powers granted to the government
to counter terrorism, given the special threat, should not be used for other
purposes. On the other, in a society in which over 35 percent of homicide
cases remain unsolved, with that number rising to nearly 60 percent for
cases of rape and almost 90 percent for instances of burglary and motor
vehicle theft, some extension of powers to enhance public safety might be
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justified. Sorting out this particular balance between privacy and public
safety other than counterterrorism is beyond the purview of this chapter
but deserves much more attention that it has been granted so far.
The discussion next turns to the question of what measures can be
taken to further ensure that counterterrorism powers will not be abused
in any of the ways they have been in the past. That is, instead of arguing
that there is no need to rebalance security and privacy in order to mini-
mize future terrorist attacks—the challenge now is, given the assumption
that a rebalancing is called for, what measures can be added to those in
place to ensure that the enhanced powers will be employed only for legitimate
purposes?
The reason the challenge is worded in terms of which measures should
be “added” rather than which should be “employed,” is that many are
already in place. The executive branch has layers upon layers of super-
visors, who are the first line of accountability. In addition, there are
Inspectors General and Privacy Officers who often serve as quite forceful
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critics of the practices of concern here. Congress has various commit-
tees charged with oversight, and there is also the investigative branch of
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the Government Accountability Office. The courts, too, play an impor-
tant role in checking and balancing abuses of government power. The
media also frequently acts as a major guardian against abuses. Investiga-
tive bodies such as the Pike and Church committees—as well as the 9/11
Commission—also serve to review and vet the government’s claims and
behavior. In the past, all these institutions served to reveal abuses when
they occurred and acted to curb them, albeit often only after consider-
able delay. Further, the fact that abuses occurred at all suggests that there
is reason to further enhance scrutiny of the government and to establish
additional precautionary measures.