Technology can be a wonderful thing. Thanks to the efforts and money of skilled individuals and private investors, virtually every one of us can communicate instantly and constantly by phone, video and computer, interact with friends on social media sites, get directions, listen to our favorite artists and watch movies — all on a single, small device. Such technologic convenience, however, comes at a potentially high price in terms of personal privacy.
It is often said there is no such thing as “privacy” in the digital age. While that is somewhat true given the prevalence of social media, it does not mean that Americans should ignore the activities in which their government and private businesses are engaged, and the degree to which such actions compromise their individual privacy.
It is no secret that big cities across the United States — Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C and others — have installed vast closed-circuit camera networks that city officials use to spy on people walking down the street. But The Daily Mail, a U.K.-based paper, reported a startling revelation this week. It appears that Apple and Google are using spy planes to expand their already-controversial mapping services.
According to The Daily Mail, Google hopes to use the planes to “create 3D maps with much more detail than its satellite-derived Google Earth images.” That may sound like a worthwhile endeavor, but there are very real privacy risks involved. For example, the planes and the photographic equipment they employ are so sophisticated they “could potentially see into homes through skylights and windows.”
The story illustrates a major problem: Technology is moving far faster than policy, laws and regulations have accommodated.
There is, of course, a major difference between the government conducting aerial and satellite filming of persons and things, including those scenarios that are not by any stretch “public,” and non-governmental entities acquiring such information. For one thing, the government can put you in jail based on what it discovers. The government also is subject to constitutional and legal mandates that do not necessarily limit private organizations.
As in most areas of the law, there are gray areas that raise legitimate questions. For example, are private companies using government money to develop and conduct their surveillance? Are companies using government-funded research and/or government-provided equipment? Affirmative answers to these questions could indicate an effort to circumvent and avoid restrictions contained in the Constitution and laws that might prohibit government from doing directly what it may be doing indirectly through private companies.
It is one thing for companies to gather information about people who have elected to join a service and “agree” that the service might gather information on them. It is something else altogether for a company to photograph people who are sunbathing in their fenced-in backyards and have not agreed to anything.
Moreover, photographing people from the sky — whether by drone, plane or satellite — with cameras capable of picking out individual details in areas not observable from a public place presents a problem significantly different from even the recent Google street-mapping exercise. And at some point, limitations must be addressed. What might be the next steps for gatherers of such data? Perhaps they’ll start using infra-red aerial photography, or maybe they’ll equip the planes doing the filming with sound recorders. As technology develops, the stakes will get higher and the debate more contentious.
Unless Google, Apple and other companies decide to step up and truly police themselves by setting down clear-cut and legally enforceable guidelines, Congress and state legislatures will likely take action on the matter. If federal lawmakers become involved, there will almost certainly be other implications. For instance, lawmakers may authorize regulations that stifle private development of technology. That would certainly be undesirable.
These are reasons why a serious and focused national debate on the privacy implications of such surveillance is essential — and that debate must happen now, before the genie has been fully released from the bottle. Contrary to some pundits, Americans do enjoy a fundamental right to privacy under our Constitution: “the right to be left alone,” free from unwarranted spying eyes, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis eloquently stated in a 1928 opinion. But in order to ensure this fundamental right still breathes with life, we all must tend to it and consciously protect it against “insidious but well-meaning encroachment” (to paraphrase Justice Brandeis’ words inscribed on the walls of the United States Capitol Building).
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He provides regular commentary to Daily Caller readers.