The Right to be Left Alone
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to privacy. Like other amendments in the Bill of Rights, it doesn’t create the right; it limits government interference with it. Shortly before he announced his withdrawal from the presidential...
From Nixon to Biden: How the US Turned Banks into Spy Networks
“Americans do not have financial privacy, really at all. We have this illusion of financial privacy.” Cato policy analyst Nicholas Anthony summed it up bluntly in an interview with privacy advocate Naomi Brockwell. Beginning in 1970 the federal government passed a...
The Dragnet State: How Geofence Warrants Turn Everyone into a Suspect
Imagine drawing a box on a map and declaring that every person who was within that area during a given time is a suspect in a crime. That is the effect of a surveillance tool called a geofence warrant. In practice, a geofence warrant allows law enforcement agencies...