Not so long ago, our lives were mostly recorded on paper. From the doctor’s office to the supermarket, any record of where we had gone or what we had done could only be tracked by looking at paper and ink. Today, however, the most intimate details of our personal habits and behaviors are now computerized. On millions of hard drives and microchips, more and more of what we do every day is recorded – not only by the government, but also by corporations. And as this report shows, when it comes to preserving our privacy, that is increasingly a distinction without a difference.
This special ACLU report, the 12th in our series on civil liberties since 9/11, paints a sobering picture of just how little control we have over our information today. It shows how information-age technology, anemic privacy laws and soaring profits have all combined to endanger our privacy rights to a point never before seen in our history.
After you read this report, you will see that reform is clearly needed.
Americans from across the political spectrum understand that “the right to be left alone” is central to our constitutional democracy – that a secure sense of personal privacy is vital to preserving the openness of American life, and to protecting the boundless creativity, innovation and prosperity for which we are known around the world.
If we allow the fear of terrorism to create a new industrial base for surveillance technology, unfettered by reasonable and effective privacy constraints, these special characteristics of the American way of life will wither on the vine.
This report is packed with fascinating and frightening details about how the relationship between government and big business is changing before our eyes – or, all too often, behind our backs. Brought together, these details add up to a trend that would be almost hard to believe if it were not so well documented.
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