Government Surveillance Injures the Innocent

by Robert E. Wright The American Institute for Economic Research

In her recent apologia for communism, Helen Andrews says that people in the Soviet bloc grew accustomed to being spied upon, rendering it a mere “annoyance at most for the average person,” albeit “excruciating for independent thinkers.” Even people who find the rest of her article anathema might concede that point, because Americans commonly shrug off government surveillance by claiming that they have done nothing illegal and hence have nothing to hide.

Americans used to consider spying an invasion of privacy; the Framers tried to balance individual rights to privacy with the public’s security interest in the Fourth Amendment, the one about “probable cause” and “warrants.” So surveillance per se is not the issue, accountability for its (mis)use is. Unconstrained government surveillance injures the innocent at least as much as it protects them from the boogie man du jour.

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