The purpose of government is to secure the rights of man against men, not to serve some nebulous concept of 'societal welfare'. Historically, societies which place a priority on the well-being of the society before that of the individual have been very ugly and undemocratic; among the most prominent countries to suppress basic human rights such as personal freedom, personal safety, and personal privacy, have been the Russia of the Czars, Lenin, and Stalin, the Germany of the Kaiser and the Fuhrer, fascist Italy, nationalist Japan, communist China, capitalist and communist dictatorships in South America... and yet some, among them our own administration, would put the United States onto this august list.
It needs to stop, and it needs to stop immediately.
As a value I offer the preservation of basic rights; as a criterion, historical legitimacy. Just as no man is an island, no society is unique: the choices we must make as a nation in response to the horrific attacks on 9/11 have been made before -- sometimes correctly, and sometimes incorrectly.

Privacy is a basic human right, and if it isn't, it's certainly enough of one to go along with those we already have. The concepts of life and property as universal rights -- rights that the government ostensibly exists to safeguard -- are not universal... the Aztecs daily sacrificed thousands to the sun without batting an eye, in much of pre-columbian America the concept of private property was considered absurd.

What matters is not that the concept of privacy is something that all humanity views equally and as a precious thing. Nothing whatsoever meets this qualification. What matters is that in Western society, American society in particular, privacy is considered a precious and universal right long before the right of a society to function more efficiently.

The government may have an obligation to maintain societal well-being, but it has a much stronger obligation to fight off creeping fascism: allowing one right to be lost is tantamount to acknowledging that no rights are sacred, and none cannot be sacrificed for some 'greater good'. Authoritarian states never happen overnight; in Hitler's Germany, for instance, political rights were removed from the German people so gradually that they did not notice or lament it. They wanted a strong government for the sake of their societal welfare, and they got it. So far as they concerned, sacrificing small things in favor of that goal was not a vice; they needed a strong nation, and 'basic rights' could only stand in the way.

Privacy is not mentioned in the Constitution because at the time it was framed, the idea of privacy being impinged upon on such a scale as it can be now would be completely absurd. There would not be enough spies in the country to follow all of the conversations in one state, let alone survey people continuously... but in this age of satellites and wiretaps, it is possible for every aspect of your life to be monitored by some malevolent authority.

CARNIVORE is a system used by the FBI to monitor private conversations and transferrals of data for 'red flags'. At this time, it is used rather benevolently. But its safeguards are not heavy enough to prevent a government with a hidden agenda from collecting information the government has no particular reason to use. Some fine day, if the idea of a right to privacy is allowed to be destroyed, the government may feel it necessary to abduct and secretly imprison anyone who might be a political opponent.

Individual claims of privacy can and must take precedence over competing claims of societal welfare. If they are not allowed to do so, it is only a matter of time before such a nightmare scenario becomes reality. It is only a matter of time before The United States are introduced to the terrors of Orwell and Huxley. Since 9/11, terrorism has been used as an excuse to strip away American liberties by people who would rather live in a safe police state than a mostly safe democracy. A loss of privacy is usually the beginning of the end for a democratic society -- for the most part because it destroys the concept of equality before the law.

A rich man can use separate systems to keep any information private... he can buy encryption, use private lines of travel and communication, and in court he is far more likely to receive a disproportionately favorable verdict because he will have a better lawyer on his side and he is viewed incorrectly as a 'pillar of society' in spite of his crimes... a poor man has none of these things. Privacy, like some other 'universal' rights, can be bought and sold. The loss of rights never hurts the powerful elites, because they usually can afford to stay on the government's good side. Witness the fact that, after most fascist takeovers, the existing landed and capitalist aristocracy generally gain power and prestige, while the poor masses suffer.

In Orwell's 1984, the disunity and unjust privelege created by a lack of guaranteed privacy is illustrated by the telescreens: only the wealthy, priveleged Party elite are allowed to turn theirs off, since they are 'above' the system. This is the world that opponents of the resolution are asking for; yes, one less oppressive, and no, not one in a continual state of warfare and stagnation, but a state with a big brother which watches over the nation's citizens at all times.

The Pledge of Allegiance, a brief hymn to the American republic recited daily by schoolchildren across the country, does not finish in 'with security and order for all'. Sacrificing inalienable rights at the altar of security is alien and repugnant to the basic principles on which this nation was founded; there is little sane recourse but to affirm the resolution.