20304 김민준

Sovereign nations have grappled with the delicate task of balancing protecting individual privacy and
ensuring national security throughout history. However, in the wake of the rapid advancements brought
forth by the digital age, this predicament has gained even greater significance, demanding thorough
contemplation. At the forefront of democracy and diversity, the United States best exemplifies this
challenge — analyzing rights to privacy and national security in terms of the US will provide a conclusive
picture. The US Supreme Court’s ruling has emphasized that privacy rights primarily stem from property
and bodily rights; when the nation is threatened, national security precedes privacy rights. One example
of this is the implementation of State of Emergency policies, which grant states the authority to
temporarily limit privacy rights to protect the nation when it is under threat. Additionally, the US
government conducts surveillance programs, such as the NYPD's suspicionless surveillance targeting the
Muslim community, which can undermine privacy rights even during safety, generating social unrest
while yielding minimal outcomes. Consequently, it is essential to prioritize national security over privacy
rights only when the state's and its citizens' physical well-being is genuinely at risk.

Privacy rights result from property and bodily rights; therefore, national security takes legal precedence
over privacy rights when the state's and its citizens' physical integrity are threatened. American
philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson was the first to propose this view. She asserted that privacy could be
adequately explained regarding property and bodily rights. The formal jurisprudence recognition of this
view of privacy rights came in the form of the Supreme Court ruling during the case of Griswold v. State
of Connecticut (1965), which the court reasoned prohibited states from denying birth control to married
couples. Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, William O. Douglas, derived the rights to
privacy from those guaranteed by the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments, specifically, the
property and bodily rights. This verdict signified property and bodily rights’ and, subsequently, national
security’s priority over privacy rights, including the right to personal autonomy, publicity, and the
prohibition of the state’s access.

The State of Emergency is the epitome of the aforementioned national security’s precedence over privacy
rights when the nation is under threat. A state of emergency is a situation in which a state or federal
government is empowered to put through policies that it would typically not be permitted to do. This
grant of power can extend to infringing upon citizens' privacy and collecting information to preserve
national security if necessary. One instance of the state of emergency was during the COVID-19
pandemic. The global outbreak of the Covid virus entailed the death of millions and social unrest—the
nation was under threat. Subsequently, the US government issued a national State of Emergency. During
the State of Emergency, The US government deemed processing personal data, such as location
information and health statistics, necessary to take appropriate measures to contain the spread.
Consequently, the policies instituted during the State of Emergency approved numerous accounts of
government agencies’ collection of private information. For example, “Health reporting,” including
COVID-19 testing, temperature testing, and public- and private-sector health surveys, was made
mandatory. Additionally, Health tracking policies, including manual and automated tracking and contact-
tracing mechanisms (mobile-phone tracking and applications), by both states and private companies were
instituted.

The US government also utilizes various surveillance programs to secure the nation; however, they pose
various risks to citizens due to the disparity between the watcher and the watched, leading to
discrimination and selective enforcement. The outrageous treatment of people of color exemplifies this
disparity. During the 1950s and 1960s, the FBI tracked Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and other
civil rights activists through its Racial Matters and COINTELPRO programs without clear guardrails to
prevent the agency from collecting intimate details about home life and relationships that were unrelated
to law enforcement. More recently, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, initially sparked in 2013
after the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a local vigilante, has highlighted racial biases in
policing that disproportionately lead to unwarranted deaths, improper arrests, and the excessive use of
force against Black individuals.

Furthermore, preemptive privacy restriction from surveillance condemns the exercise of citizens’ civil
liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, such as freedom of speech, press, and religion, causing social
unrest. Take for example the New York Police Department’s targeted surveillance of Muslim
communities. Since 2002, the New York City Police Department’s Intelligence Division has engaged in
the religious profiling and surveillance of Muslim communities, singling out Muslim religious and
community leaders, mosques, student associations, organizations, businesses, and individuals for
pervasive discriminatory surveillance. During the NYPD’s targeted surveillance of Muslim communities,
the NYPD’s purported radicalization “indicators” that they placed under so-called “suspicionless
preventive surveillance” were First Amendment-protected religious activities, including “wearing
traditional Islamic clothing and growing a beard,” abstaining from alcohol, and “becoming involved in
social activism.” The program also forced religious leaders to censor what they say to their congregants
for fear that anything they say could be taken out of context by police officers or informants.

Despite the dangers surveillance entails, government agencies advocate for their effectiveness in securing
the nation to justify their actions—their surveillance programs’ negligible or even derogatory results attest
otherwise. For example, the NYPD’s strict surveillance programs against the Muslim community left the
city in disarray without providing meaningful results. The NYPD’s discriminatory surveillance has
chilled religious speech and political activism—from engagement in public debates and protests to
friendly coffee-house banter. It has also diverted time and resources from religious education and
counseling. Although costing the city and the community much, the surveillance program wasn’t fruitful.
It neither resulted in terrorist arrests nor a significant drop in crime rates. "I never made a lead from
rhetoric that came from a Demographics report, and I'm here since 2006," as commanding officer of the
NYPD Intelligence Division, Thomas Galati, confessed as part of his deposition during a federal civil
rights case. Additionally, numerous government surveillance leaks further affirmed surveillance’s
ineffectiveness. Namely, the 2013 NSA surveillance program data leak, more commonly known as the
Snowden leaks, revealed the minimal results of the NSA’s surveillance programs. In 2013, NSA
‘Snowden’ leaks were exposed to the public, detailing US spying programs' scope and extra-judicial
extent. ‘Snowden leaks’ contained the NSA’s mass collection of millions of Verizon phone records, an
Obama-era order for collecting overseas cyber-attack targets, and an NSA program that logged US
citizens’ Internet and email metadata in real-time. However, contrary to the extensive scale of the
program, the results were trivial, highlighted by references in the leaks to an NSA program codenamed
ShellTrumpet. The leaks exposed one of the NSA’s official reports stating that ShellTrumpet had just
"processed its One Trillionth of the metadata record" during its five-year enactment, revealing the
lackluster results of the program.

In conclusion, the delicate balance between protecting individual privacy and ensuring national security
becomes even more critical in the face of modern-day threats. The United States, as a leading example,
recognizes that privacy rights, rooted in property and bodily rights, may give way to the priority of
national security when the nation is under threat. This is evident in the implementation of State of
Emergency policies, which temporarily limit privacy rights to safeguard the nation during times of crisis.
While the need for national security justifies the temporary encroachment of privacy rights, ensuring that
such measures are proportionate and respectful of individuals' fundamental rights remains vital. Therefore
it is crucial to acknowledge the drawbacks of extensive surveillance. Surveillance programs infringe upon
civil liberties and generate social unrest while providing minimal results. The disproportionate outcomes
and limited effectiveness of such programs, as evidenced by various instances and leaks, underscore the
need for their prohibition.