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Show Pull shades down i Americans take a certain amount of privacy for granted. "None of your damned business" is virtually a national ! motto. We assume that telephone calls, personal letters, conversations with friends and bedroom intimacies are not watched or overheard by the outside world. The freedom to be eccentric in one's own home is essential to a lot of other important rights like a free press, free speech and religious liberty. Recently we have had less and less reason to feel so confident about personal privacy. The growth of computer com-puter data banks, for instance, gives large organizations ranging from credit agencies to the Army instant access to details on everyone's daily life. Financial affairs, political beliefs and personal habits are being steadily filed away for millions of ordinary people. As a part of this general trend former Attorney General John Mitchell (and then Attorney General Richard Kleindienst) claimed that wiretapping and other forms of electronic eavesdropping were essential to ending crime and subversion. Contrary to the Fourth Amendment, he argued, the government could listen in on anybody (without even a warrant) if they were threats to "domestic security." With and without court approval, the number of bugs has been growing steadily for three years. Wiretaps currently number in the thousands. So the Supreme Court's ruling two weeks ago that the President needed warrants before playing Peeping Tom is a small step in the right direction. It didn't go far enough; it's obvious that continuous electronic eavesdropping is inherently pernicious and destructive of personal freedom. As such, it should be completely ended, except perhaps in a very limited range of espionage cases, whether or not a judge issues a warrant. Severe restrictions should be placed on the accumulation of data on citizens by any group. But it's a start. At least the government has to come up with some reason before they can listen to you. We hope the government comes to recognize that the individual's privacy and freedom is more important to the survival of this nation than capturing a few inept knuckleheads of the New Left. America can outlast a few dozen "subversive radicals." It can't outlast the end to individual in-dividual freedom and dignity implied by the use of wiretapping. Are you listening, Mr. Kleindienst? |