Leave Me Be

The NSA tracks where my cellphone has been.

The NSA keeps track of who I email.

The police photograph and track where my license plate has been.

My doctor can use my urine sample to keep track of what I'm putting in my body.

I may have to provide urine samples showing the contents of my body just to keep my job.

The Post Office photographs all of my mail for law enforcement.

Cameras watch me in stores, on the street, or at work.

Cameras watch my grandchildren at their schools.

A vast database of information about my grandchildren is following them through the years.

The police can search my trash without a warrant.

The police or my neighbors can fly tiny drones armed with cameras over my home to watch what I do.

The police can search the land I live on without a warrant, even if I post "No Trespassing" signs.

I am stripped naked and photographed by full body scanners just because I want to fly somewhere.

Satellites take pictures detailed enough to show my house and car and Google drives by to take "street views" and share them with the world.

Facebook's facial recognition software can pick me out in photos.

Cookies on my computer can tell where I surf and what I'm interested in.

(click on statements above for more information)

In 1984 (written in 1949), George Orwell described a society where telescreens watched citizens in their homes around the clock.  How many things do you do in a day that are still private?

So who needs this privacy? I do.  You do. Those who assert they don't fear surveillance because they have "nothing to hide" forget that our entire identities consist of the private, secret thoughts, attitudes and actions that only we are privileged to own.

A few writers have expressed this well.  I encourage you to read:

"You May Have 'Nothing to Hide' but You Still Have Something to Fear" (ACLU)

or

"Privacy and the Threat to Self" (New York Times)

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans care much for protecting the 4th Amendment and all of us from the snoopers. But this may well be the critical human rights issue of our time.