Suspected terrorist: multimillionaire John Gilmore is suing the government to remain anonymous. Is this the last stand for privacy?

Reason, August, 2003 by Brian Doherty

It's also clear from examining the techniques of private eyes that laws restricting who has access to government databases don't mean much--the real danger comes from those with a legitimate reason to use them. Sometimes the best way to get information from privileged databases is to apply persuasion to those who have professional access to them. As many real-world cases show, any system with a human element is inherently insecure. As James Lee, marketing chief of ChoicePoint, tells me, most of what professional database companies pull together for their clients comes from tedious collation of public records--in other words, from the government.

Not that the government provides no protection for your privacy. Specific public controversies have led to specific privacy laws. Robert Bork had his video rental record, made public, and we got the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988. Actress Rebecca Schaeffer got murdered by a stalker who found her address through state motor vehicle records, and we got the Drivers Privacy Protection Act of 1994. It's doubtful, though, in the post-9/II environment, that any personal embarrassment or tragedy that accompanies things like CAPPS II will lead to crisis laws to protect travelers' privacy.

When it comes to protecting information about ourselves--our privacy or, as John Gilmore wishes, our anonymity--what can we do about it? What right do we have to do anything about it?

Many privacy concerns are more a matter of sensibility than of objective injury. It is probably true that in most cases a lot more trouble will come from refusing to show an ID than would ever come of showing it. When I talk to people about this story, those who aren't professional privacy activists often ask me, Why the hell is Gilmore fighting about this? Still, some people do consider it an affront that anyone would demand private information from them that they have no good reason to obtain.

Most objections to Gilmore's beliefs about anonymity and privacy can be reduced to the familiar slogan: Only the Guilty Have Reason to Fear. Why, if you have nothing to hide, do you care who knows who you are, your credit and medical records, or what you've been reading in the library and renting from the video store?

That slogan may be silly, but it's important. Not because it settles any arguments, but because it delineates boldly what's at stake. It also makes possible a similarly bold, clearly widely believed, yet rarely voiced response: We are all guilty, and we don't want to live in a world where there is no room to get away with being guilty.

As the Pacific Research Institute's Arrison says, "We all make errors and mistakes, and if we are constantly slapped for every single thing we do, it would make a really terrible place to live. A society that expects us all to be infallible is unnatural."

Secure Beneath Watchful Eyes

Imagine an airplane flight in a very plausible future in which John Gilmore's fight has been lost. While not everything in it is happening now, there are few technological or legal barriers to keep this scenario from becoming real in the near future.