Right to Privacy: An Outmoded Concept?
Without privacy there can be no freedom
It seems almost taken for granted that as an American Citizen you may expect to encounter government officials armed with demands for information about your personal life. You are expected to reveal the most private and confidential information about yourself to any official, government agency, or business that asks for it, and you are expected to do so willingly and without question.
Additionally, these days it has been made very easy to provide your private in formation. Just swipe your card, or better yet touch your fingertip to a screen, or look into an iris recognition device. Digital technology makes it very convenient to surrender your private information, and the American people have become addicted to their modern conveniences.
When you go to a retail store to return a defective product, are you asked for personal and private information, including your address and telephone number, social security number, etc.? Why do you answer such questions? Did you have to give that information when you first purchased the product? No, of course not. Then why should you give it in order to get your money back?
Am I alone in thinking this to be an invasion of privacy? Am I the only American who thinks that my private life is nobody else’s business, that I have the right to withhold personal information from anyone, especially from the federal or State government, if I so choose? Am I unique in considering myself to have an absolute right to privacy? I strongly doubt it. Rather, I suspect tens of millions of Real Americans feel as I do. Perhaps you are one of them.
The socialist rationale given by government officials and agencies is that in today’s society we have to consider ourselves to be “citizens of the world,” discarding as obsolete the antiquated principles of national or personal sovereignty. We are told that we must – individually and collectively – sacrifice portions of our God-given rights “for the good of us all.” This is the cry of the communist, the plaint of the socialist, the declaration of the enemies of individual freedom.
However, before condemning any system of thought outright, we should objectively and honestly examine the principles behind that position, comparing them to the standards established by our Founding Fathers through the Declaration of Independence and secured by federal and state constitutions. We should look at the reasons we are asked to surrender our privacy.
We are told that our desire for privacy interferes with the efficient efforts of law enforcement officials to fight the “War on Drugs,” illegal immigration, terrorism, counterfeiting, or whatever crisis de jure. But do even these so-called crises justify infringement of our basic rights to keep private information about ourselves to ourselves?
Many law enforcement officials have made statements such as, “You shouldn’t mind our questions if you have nothing to hide.” If you ever encounter such an official you might ask if he wouldn’t mind your conducting a thorough investigation into his private life?
Regarding official suggestions that severe methods requiring unprecedented intrusion into our private lives are needed to combat illegal immigration, I draw your attention to the fact that every American (except Native Americans) is an immigrant through ancestry. How many of you would object if each new immigrant started a farm, ranch or other business, hired people, and contributed to the economy of our country? Would any of you object? Probably not. The real problem existing today is that people are emigrating to our country, then the federal government – a foreign government with respect to the Union states – is taking your property and giving it to these immigrants. That is socialism and it represents the antithesis of a free society and the American way of life.
We are told that we are living in a new world, a modern world in which the needs of the planetary population are such that Americans must sacrifice their individual rights in order that these undefined collective needs may be met. But what exactly are the problems facing people in our world today? Hunger, disease, health concerns, etc. These problems have existed on our planet for thousands of years.
Thirty years and a waste of trillions of dollars on the so-called “War on Poverty” has proven that poverty cannot be eliminated by government programs. It cannot be corrected by a redistribution of wealth. (Even if it could, who would decide whose wealth should be redistributed, and to whom?) The problems facing people today are the exact same problems that have faced people throughout recorded history. Two thousand years ago, Jesus said there would always be poor people.
Official “charities” don’t offer workable solutions, either. If you send money to CARE or the American Red Cross or the Salvation Army, most of your contributions go to pay bureaucrats, not to help those people in need. Try calling a charity sometime and ask for the name and address of a needy person so that you can send money directly to him or her. You will not be given that information. Why not, if the goal of the charity is to help the needy?
What would Thomas Jefferson have said in response to these intrusive actions? He would have said that drugs are not a problem in America; that the real problem occurs when drug addicts commit crimes to support their addictions and the judicial system fails to punish them. He would say that American Bar Association members (attorneys) have taken it upon themselves to act as judge, jury and executioner in the courts, and have chosen to line their own pockets through the use of “procedure” rather than administer justice through fixed principles of due process. He would refuse to allow any infringement of his privacy to support a phony “War on Drugs,” or even to fight the ambiguous “terrorist,” because the American system of jurisprudence already provides all of the necessary mechanisms to combat crime. He would say that infringements upon natural rights are never justified for any reason, because those same rights are your most sacred personal property, a gift from God and Nature. He would state his preference that 100 violent criminals go free before one innocent is incarcerated, and then he would refuse to give out any information about himself.
What about government claims that you must surrender your privacy “for the greater good?” Consider this: the federal government has shown by its deeds that its agents and officials are liars. When was the last time the federal government – through its elected officials, agents and representatives – kept its word or told the truth (not including keeping promises to raise taxes)? Know them by their actions, not their words. Government officials lie, so why would you entrust a proven liar with private information about yourself?
It is clear to me that privacy is not an outmoded concept. My private life remains private, and therefore I can enjoy the freedoms that our forefathers fought and died to preserve.
I invite you to stop cooperating with requests or demands for private information. Starting today, stop acting like a mindless servant and start behaving like the sovereign you are by your birthright as a free being. The next time a clerk asks for personal information in order to issue a refund, refuse to cooperate. Call a supervisor and watch how quickly you get your refund without giving out any information about yourself. Next time a government official, IRS agent, etc. tells you that you have to give out private information, challenge his authority and make him provide you with his personal information before you say anything more. Don’t accept the rationales used to justify and impose restrictions on your privacy. Stop believing the lies spewed out by government employees. Re-learn how to live as a Real American lives.
Without privacy there can be no freedom. Protect your privacy at all costs.
About the Author: Brent Johnson is host of the long running number 1 hit freedom talk show The Voice of Freedom, and also hosts the new hit show, The Global Freedom Report, the only freedom variety show in the world!
Brent is also the author of The American Sovereign: How to Live Free from Government Regulation, the spiritual book, The Quiet Voice of God, and his newest book, The Pursuit of Happiness: Freedom and the Human Spirit.
He has a superb web site at www.freedomradio.us; where you can also listen to The Voice of Freedom podcasts and webcasts; you can link from there to The Global Freedom Report, too. You can also call him toll-free at 888-385-3733 that’s 888-385-FREE.
For more than fifteen years, Brent has had great success teaching those who want to know practical, genuinely workable methods on how to live free from the endless encroachment of Big Brother. He is bureaucratically invisible and is left alone by the IRS and not harassed at all by government regulators. Brent is a truly modern day freedom fighter.
Excellent Article! However, since the dumbing down of the American population – it seems anyone under 40 automatically assumes the government (and any one else) has a right to pry, probe and poke into your private affairs.
I was in a card shop some months back, and each person on line who got up to the register to pay was asked for their telephone number! (“Asked” isn’t quite right. The request was “Your telephone number, please.”)
Customer after customer complied without comment.
When my turn came, I said it’s really none of your business. The clerk looked, shook her head and called for the manager. The manager told the young clerk it wasn’t mandatory for a customer to part with that information.
The entire mindset of an entire generation is being molded into acting like sheep.
It’s going to get worse – much worse.
It’s not a dumbing down, it’s a dumbing up. Those of us with little schooling and a healthy distrust of “education” – the trash, hicks, blue collar, etc. – are traditionally the people who pick up brickbats and strike back the earliest and the hardest. They may not have brains, but they have a low level of tolerance for government intrusion. It’s the college educated – the techies and professional class – who take down their pants and voluntarily bend over for big brother time and time again. All those courses in “critical thinking” may help build the conveniences of modern civilization, but the brain is not the vital organ we’ve been taught to imagine it as. Let the great depression come, close the universities, stave off “enlightenment”and then, when everyone is a pissed-off moron sewer scrubber, we’ll finally see some real action for social justice.
I tell them I don’t have one and carry on.
Excellent article.
I agree, an excellent article. However, just to post this comment I was required to submit my name and email address only website was optional.
Why?
Rather than savor some picayune victory over not giving a clerk one’s phone number, perhaps try thinking a little bigger: like migration- leaving one’s mother country allows one to reset the bureaucratic clock. I left the US after military service 40 years ago, preferring the freedom of being a foreigner in Asia. Smartest move I ever made. Yep, freedom starts with privacy and one vital form of privacy is anonymity. Available at virtually all developing and dysfunctional countries near you. I don’t like what America has become, but I don’t want to waste my life swimming against a tidal wave of social sewage. The lifestyle and the majority of it’s opportunities talked about on this blog and website have already vanished in America. Nostalgia and anger won’t revive it. “Escape” will protect an individual’s privacy and freedom, as the title of this site suggests. For America, there is no going back. If you want to be free, leave the country because the country isn’t free – unless you’re on welfare.
Life is best spent living, not trying to change things that inevitably keep changing regardless of our puny wills.
Think personal.
Good luck to all.
Those interested in privacy issues might also want to check out Privacy International (http://www.privacyinternational.org/). If you think the USA is one of the better countries for protecting privacy, this map might convince you otherwise:
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd347=x-347-559597&alstheme=Data%20Protection%20and%20Privacy%20Laws
What I can’t believe is how many people so willingly give up there SSN#. I sent money via a Wall Mart moneygram (the other party requested the payment be sent this way). The clerk took out a notebook (it was not locked up or in a secure area – any Wall Mart employee could have access) from under the counter and asked me for my SSN# – I said no and she said she can’t do it. Just the next day I was signing up for cellular service and the clerk asked for my SSN#. Another person in the store just wrote his SSN on a scrap paper and handed it to them. I again said no – they amazingly found a way to work around it. Just because somebody asks doesn’t mean you have to give it to them.