A Little Less Privacy, a Bit More Security

[Commentary] The European Union has announced that it will overhaul its data protection rules in 2011. Later this month, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Commerce Department will release their own reports on online privacy. Meanwhile, as part of the much-hyped efforts to prepare for "cyberwar," the U.S. National Security Agency is strengthening ties with organizations like Google and its efforts to mine social networking sites like Facebook. The dynamic is a familiar one. As usual, privacy will lose.

Spying on foreigners has long been regarded as an unseemly but necessary enterprise. Spying on one's own citizens in a democracy, by contrast, has historically been subject to various forms of legal and political restraint. Three factors are driving the erosion of the distinction:

• First, many of the threats facing modern democracies do not respect national borders. For the foreseeable future, the most significant threat of violence in countries like the United States will come from terrorists who do not have an obvious state sponsor. The targets of intelligence services will therefore be individuals rather than states.
• The second factor is the revolution in technology and communications.
• Third, changes in culture are progressively reducing the sphere of activity that citizens can reasonably expect to be kept from government eyes.

[Chesterman is director of the New York University School of Law Singapore Program]