Essay Should Privacy Be Valued Over Security

Should Privacy Be Valued Over Security In The US? In most recent events the debate over the United States citizen’s rights to privacy has come up more and more frequently starting after the attacks of 9/11. The United States government has put into motion a number of precautionary levels of security and restraints on the American citizen’s out of fear of another large tragedy such as 9/11 and even more recently the Boston Bombing. The matter of if the added security precautions are therefore infringing on our Constitutional rights is a matter all in its own.
The American citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy but it is not an unalienable or fundamental right. In most cases a person’s choices affect the level of privacy they experience. When it comes to invasive surveillance programs like what has recently come to light in our own government, they are most certainly unethical, but a violation of a person’s right is not the case. Although the Constitution has articles that may imply various rights of privacy, there is no clear statement of such a right in the Constitution itself. Privacy rights are inferred from the Bill of Rights, and specifically the Fourth
Amendment put in for the stated purpose of protecting US citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. The origin of the Fourth Amendment however, constitutionally based privacy rights have been interpreted mainly as a means of protecting individuals against intrusion by the government but not by private parties. Some of the most famous privacy cases in recent decades have involved the United States government regulation of contraceptives and abortion. The emotional burden attached to these issues has greatly fueled claims of those who do not believe that the Bill of Rights contains privacy provisions. A few other amendments that privacy is implied in are such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment) and the Fifth Amendment 's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information. The Ninth Amendment states that the "enumeration of certain rights" in the Bill of Rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people." The Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause is intended to protect all unremunerated rights considered fundamental, the right to privacy. Today, Substantive Due Process is used to protect the individual against exploitation that creates a burden on individuals or on a specific group or class of citizens. The Supreme Court first declared an individual 's right to privacy in the case Griswold v.
Connecticut, (1965), which overturned a Connecticut law prohibiting doctors from counseling married couples on the use of birth control. The Court held that the state had no interest interfering in communication between a doctor and patient, that the discussion was private. Griswold set the precedent used to legalize abortion in Roe v. Wade, (1973) and to decriminalize intimate sexual practices between two (or more) consenting adults in Lawrence v. Texas, (2003). Cruzan v Missouri Department of Health (1990) stated that individuals have a liberty interest that includes the right to make decisions to terminate life-prolonging medical
treatments.
The right to privacy although not specifically outlined in our US constitution but instead in our Bill of Rights in some cases is a fundamental and basic human right. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." It is important to recognize that the US cannot violate these basic Human Rights Laws put forward by the United Nations. If the US undermines and take away something as simple as privacy, then we are undermining all our basic human rights.
Issues where security should have came before privacy. A business example of this would have been the Enron scandal. Due to them having too much privacy and no internal operations and limited external regulations, it led to one of the biggest scandals in US history. The issue was at that time it was not against the law. Through multiple failures and them eventually facing bankruptcy, it was a detriment to the economy and even shareholders at the time. Since them the Sarbanes-Oxley act has been put in place to help catch situations like this. The business can maintain its privacy but within proper regulation. This should be the case in most scenarios. This in turn results in the battle of personal privacy versus national security and everybody agrees that both aspects are incredibly essential. At the same time, the complete existence of one rules out the existence of the other. There needs to be a balance between the both otherwise the government may have too much authority. One should not override the other, and in terms of keeping people safe there has to be limitations to each.
Privacy is an essential right, but so is the maintaining and upholding the well being of others. If there is any way to protect others, and prevent bad circumstances from happening it should be pursed and chased. There is a line where both need to meet equally and work together. If one were to override the other, it would be a detriment to us as a nation. Therefore the US needs both privacy and security to guarantee the safety of our nation and the people within it. Privacy is an absolute necessity in a developed society like ours today. It is a sign of development, an indicator that a government respects its citizens and is willing to grant them their fundamental human rights. If the US puts security first, they are saying that they are willing to give up on human rights for a hypothetical threat that may or may not yield an outcome. Benjamin Franklin once famously said: "those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”. This is why privacy must come first; otherwise, it’s illogical, unconstitutional and completely pointless.

Works Cited http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/your-right-privacy http://www.livescience.com/37398-right-to-privacy.html http://www.washingtontimes.com... http://www.usatoday.com... http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com... http://library.thinkquest.org/07aug/01676/relevance_socialandprivacy_personalvsnational.html