Page 61 - Privacy in a Cyber Age Policy and Practice

46 PRIVACY IN A CYBER AGE

iv. High Volume, High Sensitivity, Must Limit Cybernation
According to the CAPD, highly sensitive information should be collected
only if there is a compelling public interest to do so. Here, too, the main
issue is limiting cybernation rather than collection. The Social Security
Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the
IRS all hold considerable amounts of sensitive personal information on the
300 million (mostly) innocent U.S. citizens. However, that their databases
have been very rarely abused and the harm caused by violations has been
limited shows that a considerable level of collection and cybernation of
sensitive information can be tolerated when accountability is very high.
The same cannot be said about the databases kept by the FBI, local
police departments, and the Department of Homeland Security. These all
have been abused, as revealed by the Church and Pike committees and
various leaks to the media. Some consequently argue that these collections
should be greatly curtailed, if not abolished entirely. Civil libertarians have
often objected to the details (or even the very existence) of such databases,
including the Terrorist Screening Database—which includes the “No Fly
List” 115 —and the federal DNA profile database, NDIS. 116 Although the
rationales for these objections differ, they often reflect—aside from spe-
cific concerns, such as the belief that DNA profiles are particularly sensitive
information—a sense that the government cannot be trusted. Even if the
current government is trustworthy, many civil libertarians say, future gov-
ernments may abuse the databases, and it is therefore best if no collection
or storage occurs.
Discussion of the CAPD has so far focused on one of the two core ele-
ments of a liberal communitarian approach—rights, in particular the right
to privacy—and has held constant the other element: the common good.
This is necessary because a society that faces higher demands for the com-
mon good in the face of an epidemic or some other threat may well permit
greater intrusions on individual liberties than a society that faces lower
or declining demands for the common good. However, it must be noted
in closing that the analysis is incomplete without accounting for the con-
tributions to the common good called for in a given society at a particu-
lar moment in history. To stay with the present example, given that many
crimes in the United States remain unsolved and that DNA databases help
to close a growing number of such cases, DNA databases should be main-
tained or expanded with the caveat that accountability measures should be
improved. Numerous suggestions to this effect have been made and need
not be explored here. 117 (That accountability can be effectively operational-
ized has already been demonstrated.)
Some have expressed fear that a future government might remove such
protective measures and abuse the information held in databases. This is