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Anybody with more than a passing interest in online activity, security, privacy, etc., etc. ought to know that security and privacy are opposite sides of the same coin. Greater security (esp. in the national interest) eats privacy; exercised privacy entitlement by its nature inhibits security. To a fair degree privacy advocates have been "winning" despite a widely understood security issue. Consider the US Total Information Awareness program (in truth an excessive bit of oversight) as a high-profile example.
The weight of support on the side of "freedom" and "privacy" is a good thing because of the well-meaning excesses of those fighting terrorism in every form. But, fact is, security of every sort is limited by those rights. Most "Liberal" media come down in support of those natural and constitutionally-protected rights because of stories about (and actual activity!) governments mining data like this one in the NY Times: Survey Finds U.S. Agencies Engaged in 'Data Mining'.
So, Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has this to say in Washington Post op-ed piece entitled, Common Sense and Computer Analysis:
A prestigious advisory panel has just recommended that the Defense Department get permission from a federal court any time it wants to use computer analysis on its own intelligence files. It would be acceptable, according to the panel, for a human agent to pore over millions of intelligence records looking for al Qaeda suspects who share phone numbers, say, and have traveled to terror haunts in South America. But program a computer to make that same search, declares the advisory committee, and judicial approval is needed, because computer analysis of intelligence databanks allegedly violates "privacy."Posted by Grayson at May 31, 2004 07:13 AMThis nonsensical rule is the latest development in the escalating triumph of privacy advocacy over common sense. Unfortunately, the privacy crusade is jeopardizing national security as well. . . .