Privacy vs. Orwellian Intrusions

by Unknown

With only 12 months to go until the year 2000, some advocates of personal privacy protection are warning that intrusive government agencies—as well as insurance companies, health-care corporations, the Internal Revenue Service, and even state and local law enforcement bureaus—are only slightly behind schedule in initiating the sort of Big Brother society envisioned in Orwell's terrifying futuristic novel 1984. Others, meanwhile, argue that public safety, fighting crime, improving health care for the young and other concerns far outweigh worries about individual privacy which, with only few exceptions, will affect very few law-abiding citizens.

Government ultimately knows best what's good for the majority of Americans. Right? Since 1945, as an example, U.S. officials have hailed as one of the century's great advances in public health the fluoridation of public water systems. With an estimated 62% of the country's communities in compliance, fluoridation has resulted in many children reaching adulthood cavity-free; but a study to be released early in 1999 by the Center for Disease Control estimates that 25% of America's children are now affected with fluorosis, a permanent discoloration of their teeth by exposure to too much fluoride because it also occurs naturally in foods that we all consume, such as grape juice and tea.

About 1 percent of children are also allergic to peanuts. Under the 1986 Air Carrier Access Act, a federal law guaranteeing access to airlines for the disabled, the U.S. Department of Transportation has advised the ten major carriers to consider designating "peanut-free zones" on all flights similar to those smoke-free sections were on planes before smoking was completely forbidden. Similarly, the New York Times in a Sept 26 editorial entitled "Peanut Butter as a Health Threat" hints that, while peanut-free zones in school lunchrooms may sound like a good idea, "a ban may create a false sense of security since there is no way to insure that no student will ever bring a snack that may contain the offending substance and then share that item with an allergic student."

Schools must create policies instead, the paper advises, to have epinephrine and other medicines on hand to stop severe allergic reactions to food—milk, eggs, wheat and such—sadly unavailable at the time to all the children who "have died after coming into contact with peanuts in school."

Stopping short of advocating peanut searches of passengers boarding planes or students entering schoolrooms, many Americans who might consider such measures extreme, willingly approve the practice of police setting up sobriety checkpoints supposedly to nab drunk drivers responsible for the deaths of 20,000 children and adults every year. While Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens points out—in dissent from other High Court members who have ruled the practice not in violation of the Fourth Amendment—that no evidence shows sobriety checkpoints do anything to reduce the rate of drunk-driving accidents, the general public has expressed little opposition to law officers arbitrarily stopping them on highways without any suspicion they are driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

As the problems of crime and drugs and drink get worse, the cry to do something—anything—will tempt politicians and judges to start narrowing constitutional protections, writes liberal syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. Sobriety checkpoints, he goes on, "are part of a larger phenomenon: when dealing with serious social ills like drunk driving or drug abuse or illegal immigration, it has become an American habit to take the lazy road. The path to least resistance is always to violate privacy first. Now it's the sobriety checkpoints. Yesterday it was mandatory drug testing. As a curb on illegal immigration, even national ID cards were once contemplated."

Big Brother's Many Faces?

This past December 22, some 20,000 Mom-and-Pop and other small private gasoline stations across the U.S. were forced out of business at the stroke of midnight by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As approved by Congress in 1988, the EPA had set that date for them to upgrade or replace underground tanks or face fines of up to $11,000 each day per pump.

"Every time they change the rules, we mortgage our home or whatever we have to stay in compliance," says Al Lewis who closed his small station in Canton, Massachusetts. "Now, there's nothing left to mortgage." Mike Mohajerin of Montgomery, Alabama who likewise shut down his Advanced Automotive station, adds: "With the law, small businesses are out and large companies are in." Both were unable to afford an estimated $100,000 to replace their old tanks which the EPA adduced were probably leaking and contaminating soil and groundwater on their properties.

Some will say the new EPA regulation is a good thing—to protect the environment. Others, however, see this as an example of Big Brother at work dictating how and under what conditions private citizens are able to use their own land and conduct their own affairs. Similarly, hardly anyone disagrees that young people should not smoke or use tobacco, but legal authorities who hire young people to supposedly catch merchants selling them cigarettes smacks of Big Brotherism, according to many constitutional experts.

Is the U.S. in danger of becoming a Big Brother style police state where federal and local officials monitor our daily activities and destroy personal privacy? Orwellian intrusions into our lives should be a major concern of all citizens. Yet, few are aware of the many plans and proposals to do just that. Here are a few examples:

• National Directory of New Hires

On October 1, 1997 the Federal government began operating a computerized directory showing every person newly hired, newly promoted, by every employer in the U.S. Called the National Directory of New Hires, it is required by changes in the 1996 welfare laws, supposedly to track down parents who owe support money to their children.

"But the directory is not just for welfare recipients," the New York Times reported on Sept. 22, 1997, "it will record basic information, including names, addresses, social security numbers and wages, for everyone hired... for a full- or part-time job by an employer of any size. ..it will be one of the largest, most up-to-date files of personal information kept by the Government." Not only will the directory record data on up to 60 million newly hired employees per year, a few of whom may owe support money to their children, it will contain information on every person entering the work force, married, single or divorced, from now on— without exception.

The directory will be available to state welfare and child support officials and also the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration and the Justice Department for whatever information those agencies deem is necessary. "The Government is creating a gigantic database with very broad uses and very little attention to the protection of personal privacy," the Times quotes Robert M. Gellman, an expert on privacy and information policy. "Private detectives will find a friend in the police department or a child welfare office to give them access to information in the directory of new hires. That already happens with criminal, medical and credit records."

• Health Identifier Codes

As part of legislation passed by Congress in 1996 that permits employees to take their health insurance with them when they switch jobs—the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act—the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was authorized to assign "unique health care identifiers" to each American so that the government can electronically tag, track and monitor our personal medical records. This, according to the New York Times (7/20/98), "would be the first comprehensive national identification system since the Social Security number was introduced in 1935." It requires codes for employers, health plans, doctors and hospitals.

What sort of code would be used? Too many health plan agencies—as well as credit card companies, motor vehicle officials and others—already use our social security numbers for identification, so some government experts have suggested thumb prints or an electronic scan of the retina combined with the latitude and longitude of each citizen's birthplace as "identifiers"—ideas straight out of Orwell's Big Brother society, with no provision for privacy protection. Indeed, Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, has noted (in the same issue of the Times), "It's illusory to give people the idea that they can protect privacy. Your managed (health) care company knows what doctors you see, what pills you take, how often they are prescribed. What don't they know?"

Adds, A.G. Breitenstein, director of the Boston-based Health Law Institute, "That information will be irrevocably integrated into a cradle-to-grave medical record to which insurers, employers, government and law enforcement will have access." And this information is "exactly what privacy is not," he goes on. "People are not going to feel comfortable going to the doctor, because now you are going to have a permanent record that will follow you around for the rest of your life that says, you had syphilis, or depression, or an abortion or whatever else" (Times 7/20/98).

While today there are federal laws that protect the privacy of the titles of movies we rent at Blockbuster or other video shops, there are no laws to protect our medical records—especially as such personal health history would be available with government "identifiers" authorized under this 1996 law. As Dr. Richard Sobel of the Harvard Law School points out: "The American political system was set up to be inefficient, to divide power. What ID numbers do is centralize power, and in a time when knowledge is power, then centralized information is centralized power. I think people have a gut sense that this is not a good idea."

In fact Congress, in an Omnibus-spending bill passed in October 1998, forbids the government from going ahead with the Big Brother national database "identifier" scheme "until legislation is enacted specifically approving the standard" on how it will be done and what privacy protections will be set into place. In the meantime, however, Orwellian intrusions in our daily lives are cropping up elsewhere.

Still More Big Brother Watching

Law-abiding private citizens are the targets of other Big Brother-proposed encroachments on our privacy. One example is the government's assumption that we could all be common criminals making cellular phone calls to underworld mob bosses, setting up drug deals and laundering illegal profits through our bank accounts.

In 1994 when Congress passed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), FBI Director Louis Freeh 'assured us that the statute would not include any power to monitor cellular telephone calls. But now, the Federal Communications Commission is attempting to require cellular and other wireless phone companies to track the location of their customers, identifying the site at the beginning and end of every call as an aid to criminal detection. Here is another busybody Big Brother attempt to monitor every citizen's movements, associations and activities in the name of fighting crime.

Likewise the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.—you see their logo, FDIC, in every bank to assure you that your money is safely deposited—has proposed something called "Know Your Customer" that assumes every' customer is a potential felon. It would require the following: determine each customers source of funds; determine each customer's normal and expected bank transaction; monitor the activity of each account looking for deposits and withdrawals that are inconsistent with the expected pattern of financial transactions; and then report any transactions that someone might call "suspicious."

Phyllis Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum, who was one of the first to note this expanding encroachment on personal privacy, explains: "Know Your Customer will enter a profile of all your financial transactions on the bank's data base. The bank will maintain a computer record of the amounts you normally deposit each month and the sources of the money (e.g., your weekly paycheck, your Social Security, your stock dividends) and the amount you normally withdraw each month (e.g., rent or mortgage, auto payment, food, utilities, credit card payment, pocket money). Then, if you deviate significantly from this pattern (such as by earning some extra money or buying or selling a car), your once-friendly bank will report the inconsistent transactions to a federal database."

Current law already requires banks to report to the government cash transactions exceeding $10,000—to spot criminals who may be depositing drug money or profits from other illegal activities. There is no reason for Big Brother to know what law-abiding customers are doing with their finances under this snooping Know Your Customer scheme that is officially titled the Minimum Security Devices and Procedures and Bank Security Act Compliance Program.

What You Can Do

• If you are concerned about these and other Orwellian intrusions into our lives and privacy write to your elected representatives asking them to do whatever possible to prevent the Federal Government from becoming a "Big Brother" police state that monitors our daily activities and sets up databanks to spy on law-abiding citizens.

• Distribute copies of this report to others and ask them to help alert their friends, business associates, etc. to the steady expansion of bureaucratic meddling in our private lives.

• Order an audio cassette of our Dangers of Apathy radio program ($5.00) on the subject of "Personal Privacy Issues" featuring privacy expert Robert Ellis Smith to learn more about this important subject.

©Mindszenty Report, the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, P.O. Box 11321, St. Louis, MO 63105, 314-727-6279.