I just reviewed some material from a privacy symposium held in 1995 in Hartford, Connecticut. The material is not a source of optimism. One of the issues covered dealt with subpoenas, search warrants, requests for telephone intercepts, and the difficulties in restraining government. One example nicely captures the difficulties. The judges annually issued more than 500 interception orders.
Ratios are almost as high for approval of subpoena and search warrant requests.
Several years ago the GAO issued a few reports on federal agency compliance with the Privacy Act. The agencies complied about as poorly as they do with FOI Acts. This is true at least in part because legislation We need broad federal guidelines favoring privacy as the default. All this suggests that guidelines and policies on how we handle privacy are difficult to arrive at, even more difficult to pass, and perhaps futile to try to enforce. I also agree that there is cause for skepticism about the effectiveness of legislative and administrative solutions, but I would argue that some of the difficulties in enforcing, monitoring, and implementing more effective solutions might be answered by the establishment of a Privacy Commission or Board.