'Nothing to hide,' much to lose

Department by department, agency by agency, we’re losing our right to privacy.

Last week the Justice Department admitted to illegal wiretapping used in criminal prosecutions on American soil.

In Colorado, Jamshid Muhtorov is being tried for aiding the Islamic Jihadi Union, a terrorist organization in Uzbekistan. The case includes private emails and phone calls that were collected without a warrant in 2008.

In admitting to the practice, the Justice Department is finally subjecting unwarranted surveillance to judicial review.

Hopefully, court by court, we can start tearing down the privacy invasions the federal government has allowed to proliferate since the Bush administration because these practices are obviously wrong.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

That’s the entire Fourth Amendment. No, it is not followed by “or, like, whatever. I don’t know, it’s up to you guys.”

The Bill of Rights applies to everyone, even non-citizens such as Muhtorov.

What is particularly shocking to me, however, are the American citizens who would passively accept infringements on their right to privacy because they “have nothing to hide.”

That is patently not the point.

Most victims of New York City’s Stop-and-Frisk policy didn’t have anything to hide, either, but they were still subjected to baseless violence, humiliation and intimidation.

Anyone whose house has ever been broken into knows how it feels when your private space is invaded by strangers. Yet for some reason, Americans think it’s OK as long as the violation occurs digitally and those strangers have government badges.

Keeping the right to privacy alive doesn’t just protect us from blanket government surveillance out of “V for Vendetta” or “1984.”

The right to privacy, which is not explicitly written in the Constitution but has become a part of United States constitutional law, has become the basis for some of the most significant court decisions in U.S. history.

When a Cleveland ordinance’s narrow definition of “family” threatened to render Inez Moore, her son and her two grandchildren homeless, the right to privacy ensured they wouldn’t be evicted from their home.

When John Lawrence and Tyron Garner were caught having sex in Lawrence’s apartment by Texas police, it was their right to privacy that maintained private consensual homosexual sex acts couldn’t be criminalized.

The right has helped students learn in foreign languages, kept abortion and pornography legal and prevented the regulation of facial hair.

Our insistence we have “nothing to hide” could corrode the foundation upon which so many important rights sit.

I don’t want the government reading my emails or listening to my calls because if I allow access to my private correspondence, how can I argue that my family, my body, my sexuality, my language is none of its business?

National security is important, but it means nothing if we continue to let our personal security slip away.

­— casefarr@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Casey Farrington on Twitter @casefarr.