Decius wrote:

flynn23 wrote:
Actually you don't have a right to privacy. There's nothing in the constitution or the bill or rights that grants anything in the way of privacy. So privacy is not a good reason to rub this out.

With respect to the matter of government surveillance there absolutely is a specifically enumerated Constitutional "right to privacy." Its the 4th amendment. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has ruled that an intent to protect general "right to privacy" is obvious in a reading of the Constitution and the 9th Amendment gives it teeth. I'm quoting here from Griswold vs. Connecticut:

Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The Fourth and Fifth Amendments were described in Boyd v. United States, as protection against all governmental invasions "of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life." We recently referred in Mapp v. Ohio, to the Fourth Amendment as creating a "right to privacy, no less important than any other right carefully and particularly reserved to the people."

We have had many controversies over these penumbral rights of "privacy and repose." These cases bear witness that the right of privacy which presses for recognition here is a legitimate one.

Ask David Koresh or anyone who's crossed the IRS about the 4th or 5th amendment's support of 'privacy'. I know that there's ample legal precedent to support the interpretation of privacy as a 'right' when reading the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, but as we've been seeing over the last few years, those precedents don't mean jack shit given the current government climate. Without it being explicit, which it isn't, then it's open for interpretation. I'm all for the concept, but it's vague, and so not easily defensible.

RE: Pentagon Expands Domestic Surveillance