Richard Posner is an influential judge on the 7th circuit appeals court and law prof at the University of Chicago.

Back in 2005 Posner made the radical argument that universal warrantless surveillance of American citizen's telecommunications would not have any privacy implication whatsoever as long as computer screening was used to identify valuable communications before escalating up to an officer:

The collection, mainly through electronic means, of vast amounts of personal data is said to invade privacy. But machine collection and processing of data cannot, as such, invade privacy. Because of their volume, the data are first sifted by computers, which search for names, addresses, phone numbers, etc., that may have intelligence value. This initial sifting, far from invading privacy (a computer is not a sentient being), keeps most private data from being read by any intelligence officer.

So, in Posner's view, there is no privacy impact associated with having a computer scan your email for suspicious passages. This essay caused me to wonder if he would also think that there would be no privacy impact associated with a warrantless search of your house as long as robots were doing the searching. I call it the "robocop" argument. Posner went on:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act makes it difficult to conduct surveillance of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents unless they are suspected of being involved in terrorist or other hostile activities. That is too restrictive. Innocent people, such as unwitting neighbors of terrorists, may, without knowing it, have valuable counterterrorist information.

In other words, Posner thinks its important that the government spy on innocent people.

Now, in 2011, he hears a case about a draconian law in Illinois that is being used to prosecute people who record the actions of the police, in public places. I'll quote Reason's explanation:

Illinois has one of the country's strictest eavesdropping statutes, requiring consent from all parties even for recording police on the street while they are performing their official duties. Doing so without permission is a Class 1 felony punishable by a prison sentence of up to 15 years, exposing people to the risk of arrest and prosecution for recording public events such as protest rallies or their own encounters with the police. Meanwhile, the police are free to record citizens during traffic stops or other interactions.

Posner, apparently, does not think that the government should be subject to the same sort of surveillance by the people which he thinks the people should be subject to by the government:

"If you permit the audio recordings, they'll be a lot more eavesdropping.…There's going to be a lot of this snooping around by reporters and bloggers," U.S. 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner said. "Yes, it's a bad thing. There is such a thing as privacy."...

I find the juxtaposition of these two views to be striking. They seem to outline a point of view that whatever empowers the state is legitimate and whatever limits the state is suspect. Perhaps its an oversimplification of Posner's outlook on privacy to simply take these two datapoints, but the comment about "reporters and bloggers" doesn't sound like an objective privacy concern.

Richard Posner's Orwellian views on privacy