Privacy is undervalued

William O. Douglas, former associate justice of the Supreme Court, claimed, "The privacy and dignity of our citizens are being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a person's life." What Douglas saw then is exactly what we see now: an undervaluing of privacy. Values Clash Con has brought up some very interesting arguments, claiming that privacy is valued correctly because violations of privacy bring about safety. Essentially, he tried to refute my arguments of liberty harmed by claiming that if we are kept safe, infringement of liberty does not matter, thus, claiming that safety is more important than liberty. This is the key issue of this debate. If I can prove that liberty is more valuable than safety, then I will have proven that this protection of safety by violating privacy should not occur because the greater value of liberty is harmed by these same violations. But is liberty in fact more valuable than safety? There are two reasons I believe liberty is more valuable than safety. The first reason is that safety without liberty is not worth having. Dwight D. Eisenhower put it well when he said, "If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom." My second reason is that safety without liberty is impossible. Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Now I would actually take this idea one step further and claim that those who give up essential liberty to purchase safety will get neither liberty nor safety. If the government possesses total control, even if this control is sometimes used to keep us safe from foreign attacks, it will lead to diminished safety, for we will no longer be safe from those that have absolute power over us. As Dr. Robert Higgs put it, "placing confidence in the government to function as savior or problem solver does not lead to the peace, prosperity, and safety that people crave. On the contrary, that misplaced confidence ultimately leads to tyranny and diminished security"in Benjamin Franklin"s words, "Neither liberty nor safety."" This can be seen in the example of Anwar al-Awlaqi that I brought up in the first round. He was a U.S. citizen murdered by the government with no trial, not even probable cause, simply because they suspected that he might possibly be associated with a terrorist. Awlaqi is just one of many such citizens. As we see, the value of safety is also harmed by a lack of liberty. Thus, the value of liberty should be held higher than safety because safety is impossible without liberty. Now let"s examine the rest of Con"s case. ConContention 1: Con claimed here that privacy is upheld throughout the nation, bringing as evidence, the Constitution, specifically the fourth amendment. According to Jonathan Turley, professor of public interest law at George Washington University, "The government can use "national security letters" to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens " and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party." Trevor Timm, (J.D.) claimed, "from 2003-2006, the FBI issued more than 192,000 National Security Letters to get Americans" business, phone or Internet records without a warrant." We can also cross-apply my examples from ProContention 4. Clearly, privacy is not upheld throughout the nation. ConContention 2: Here there were a couple of arguments. First, Con claimed that privacy is only violated to protect safety. But as I"ve already demonstrated, this should not occur since liberty ought to be valued above safety. Thus, this claim only serves to support my argument that privacy is undervalued, since we find that these violations spring from an incorrect valuing of safety over liberty. His second argument in this contention was that we have authorized the intrusion. Since we have defined privacy as "freedom from unauthorized intrusion," this would essentially mean that these intrusions do not deal with privacy as we have defined it. According to former U.S. official, William Binney, "people may have nothing to say about it" we haven"t had anything to say so far." Clearly, then, the intrusion is unauthorized. ConContention 3: Con argued that privacy is highly valued because the government doesn"t know everything. I would like to again look at the resolution: Privacy is undervalued. Not "privacy is nonexistent" or "privacy is not valued" but "privacy is undervalued." It doesn"t matter whether or not the government knows everything. The fact is that privacy is undervalued because the paramount value of liberty is harmed by the current low valuing of privacy. Con also brought up the example of minors, claiming that their privacy is valued. However, I would argue that this is actually another example of undervaluing privacy. In reality, the government is inserting itself between the parents and the child, invading the privacy of the family and seeking to become the key influence in the child"s life. This is an undervaluing of the privacy of the family, under the guise of protecting the privacy of the child. Now let"s continue on to my case. ProContention 1: Liberty is paramount. This issue has already been addressed in the values clash. ProContention 2: Tyranny/ProContention 3: Liberty. These contentions still stand, unaddressed by Con. Thus, the connection between liberty, privacy, and tyranny has been clearly established. ProContention 4: Privacy is undervalued. I believe that I have sufficiently supported this claim through the rest of my responses. Since the ultimate value of liberty is harmed by privacy violations, privacy is truly proven to be undervalued.