{"id":3,"date":"2007-12-11T13:05:20","date_gmt":"2007-12-11T18:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/2007\/12\/11\/laws-against-government-intrusions-on-"},"modified":"2007-12-20T12:25:50","modified_gmt":"2007-12-20T17:25:50","slug":"laws-against-government-intrusions-on-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/2007\/12\/11\/laws-against-government-intrusions-on-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Laws against government intrusions on privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this post I\u2019m going to give a background of the legal protections of privacy rights in the U.S. This post will focus on laws against government intrusion into our privacy. Although such laws do not restrict non-government entities such as Google from invading people\u2019s privacy, they are important in understanding how the right to privacy has been interpreted by the legal system. <\/font><\/p>\n

Although the Constitution does not contain the word \u201cprivacy,\u201d the Bill of Rights has been interpreted as protecting some privacy rights. For example, the Supreme Court ruled in Katz v. United States<\/em> (1967) that the contents of telephone calls are protected by the 4th<\/sup> Amendment. This ruling broadened 4th<\/sup>-Amendment protection by recognizing as \u201csearches\u201d government surveillance activities that do not involve physically entering a location. According to Katz<\/em>, in order to be protected by the 4th<\/sup> Amendment, \u201cthere is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy<\/span> and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as \u2018reasonable.\u2019\u201d (1)<\/font><\/p>\n

However, in Smith v. Maryland<\/em> (1979), the Court ruled that the telephone numbers one dials are not protected by the 4th<\/sup> Amendment because a mere sequence of digits does not constitute communication content and because the expectation of privacy in this case is not reasonable. The expectation of privacy is not reasonable because an intelligent, inquisitive person would know that telephone companies have the technological ability to track the numbers that are dialed. (1)<\/font><\/p>\n

Katz<\/em> and Smith<\/em> lay down the standards that the Supreme Court must use to determine whether Internet communications are protected by the 4th<\/sup> Amendment. Unfortunately, these two rulings are somewhat contradictory. According to Katz<\/em>, electronic communications such as e-mails and instant messages should be considered private, but according to Smith<\/em>, such communications, and even telephone calls, might not be private because the technical ability exists to track them. <\/font><\/p>\n

Later laws have been passed both by states and by the federal government to bolster people\u2019s privacy rights online. A few of the most notable are listed below:<\/font><\/p>\n

California<\/strong> Information Practices Act of 1977<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

This state law \u201climits the collection, management, and dissemination of personal information by state agencies. \u201c (2)<\/font><\/p>\n

Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

This federal law contains three parts. The first part, the Wiretap Act<\/strong>, forbids the government from observing or listening to private communications without the permission of at least one of the parties involved in the communication. The Stored Communications Act<\/strong> prohibits electronic communications services to provide user data or the content of communications to the federal government without a subpoena or warrant. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, however, the service provider may provide data to the government if it has a good faith belief that there is an imminent threat of death or serious injury. The third part is the Pen\/Trap Statute<\/strong>, which authorizes courts to order the installation of \u201cpen registers,\u201d devices that record phone numbers, but makes it illegal for the pen registers to be able to record the contents of telephone calls. (2)<\/font><\/p>\n

Computer Matching & Privacy Protection Act of 1988<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

This federal law sets standards that the government must follow when combining personal data that they have found out about individuals with personal data held by other federal, state, or local agencies. (2)<\/font><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Crump, Catherine.\u00a0“Data retention: privacy, anonymity, and accountability online.”\u00a0Stanford Law Review\u00a056.1\u00a0(Oct 2003):\u00a0191(39).\u00a0LegalTrac.\u00a0Gale. Harvard University Library.\u00a010 Dec. 2007\u00a0 <\/span><http:\/\/find.galegroup.com\/itx\/start.do?prodId=LT<\/a>>.<\/span><\/font><\/li>\n
  2. \u201cPrivacy: Statutory Protections.\u201d <<\/font>http:\/\/ilt.eff.org\/index.php\/Privacy:_Statutory_Protections<\/font><\/a>>.<\/font><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In this post I\u2019m going to give a background of the legal protections of privacy rights in the U.S. This post will focus on laws against government intrusion into our privacy. Although such laws do not restrict non-government entities such as Google from invading people\u2019s privacy, they are important in understanding how the right to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/mbabin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}