2). Throughout the years, cryptography has provided security for “secret” messages. The encryption machine Enigma encoded and decoded messages during World War II (Huffman 2). Currently encryption programs are used to protect personal data such as medical records and financial data during its transmission over public and private networks. It is used to secure any information a person wishes to keep private. That includes data implicating criminal activities. Child pornographers can encrypt pornographic images of children over the Internet and terrorists can use encryption to keep their plans to destroy the world a secret from Government Officials. It is a scary thought that evildoers are plotting their next attack behind encrypted doors. But before we relinquish our privacy rights to the Government out of fear, we must examine history and the Government’s involvement with similar privacy issues.Governmental History With Privacy IssuesFounding Fathers Establish Rights/ FBI Violates RightsBefore the American Revolution, the English Parliament gave colonel revenue officers the authority to search and seize at will. As a result, homes were ransacked in search of smuggled goods and the privacy of individuals was intensely violated. On the eve of the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams expressed concern regarding general searches and the conflict between Great Britain and America; so the Fourth Amendment was adopted into the Constitution (ACLU 5). The Amendment was included to protect individuals’ privacy, but “when the framers struck the original balance between personal privacy and the needs of law enforcement, remote listening devices had not yet been invented,” (ACLU 5). Electronic surveillance is arguably considered a violation of the Fourth Amendment. It, by definition, “constitutes a general search, not a search limited to specific objects, people and places as required by the Fourth Amen...
