44.493201
Issues in Technology and Security
Civil liberties and privacy as they apply
to CJ technology
"They that can give up essential
liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty
nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
"The right to be left alone
-- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued
by a free people." - Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v.
U.S. (1928)
Why
should law-abiding, middle-class citizens care about invasion
of privacy and other use of technology aimed at aliens, criminals,
etc?
Once the erosion of civil liberties
begins, each additional step erodes them more:
- "Fingerprints, ID cards,
data matching, and other privacy-invasive schemes were originally
tried on populations with little political power, such as welfare
recipients, immigrants, criminals, and members of the military,
and then applied up the socioeconomic ladder.
"Once in place, the policies
are difficult to remove and inevitably expand into more general
use. Corporations are also quick to adapt these technologies
for commercial use to target consumers, to manipulate markets,
and to select, monitor, and control employees. The technologies
fit roughly into three broad categories: surveillance, identification,
and networking.
Frequently used together as with biometrics and ID cards, or
video cameras and face recognition they facilitate the mass and
routine surveillance of large segments of the population without
the need for warrants and formal investigations. What the East
German secret police could only dream of is rapidly becoming
reality in the free world." --David
Banisar, "Big Brother Goes High Tech"
- "If you have no civil rights,
then you must rely entirely on the goodness of the government,
as well as each and every person in that government, and each
and every one of your neighbors." -- Andrew
Somers, "You Need Civil Liberties"
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