Citizens' Rights Continue Going Down the Drain

Dan Gillmor reminds us that our government considers our constitutional right to individual privacy as irrelevant:

AP: TSA Broke Privacy Laws. (The Transportation Security Agency) had promised it would only use the limited information about passengers that it had obtained from airlines. Instead, the agency and its contractors compiled files on people using data from commercial brokers and then compared those files with the lists. The article goes on to show how the agency then changed its "disclosure" after the fact to say it was doing what it had promised not to do. In other words, public officials lied through their teeth. Keep in mind that these new American apparachik work for a government that considers privacy an absolutely unacceptable luxury in an age of terrorism -- a government that not only fails to enforce the law but does pretty much what it pleases, however contrary its actions may be to the Constitution, in pursuit of its goals. The federal government is not alone. As has been pointed out here recently, New York City is blatantly ignoring the Fourth Amendment in its new subway security sweeps. Meanwhile, Congress sits there and does nothing, unless you count its imminent move to ratify the "Patriot" Act. And Americans sit there like sheep, preferring an illusion of safety to the facts of modern life, that liberty brings risks. Too bad people don't realize that the risks will be there even after we've abandoned liberty, too.