This report identifies and examines the potential threats to individual privacy created by the collection, aggregation, and dissemination of personal information by governmental agencies and the role computer systems play in potentiating such threats. Computer matching, computer profiling, the national criminal justice database, and portfolio creation via data aggregation of personal information are the governmental activities stipulated to be potentially threatening to personal privacy. Dataveillance poses dangers to the security of civil liberties in a free society. To carry on an intelligible discussion about privacy and how the collection, aggregation, and dissemination of personal information by governmental agencies may threaten individual privacy it is necessary to first define privacy and personal information. Independence, autonomy, dignity, and respect create a conceptual framework upon which privacy may be defined.
Privacy is a culturally defined norm.
Americans have become more and more concerned with their privacy as intrusive technologies have evolved. Many Americans fear that computers allow the U.S. Government too much power over the average citizen. Privacy has been protected in the United States by precedents set in court cases, by legislation and by executive act. The breadth of cases pertaining to privacy precludes the examination of all cases. Supreme Court cases provide a historical overview of the evolution of the right to privacy as the questions presented to the Court have become more complex with the introduction of new technologies into the law enforcement process.