Essay Should Privacy Be Valued Over Security

Should Privacy Be Valued Over Security In The US? In most recent events the debate over the United States citizen’s rights to privacy has come up more and more frequently starting after the attacks of 9/11. The United States government has put into motion a number of precautionary levels of security and restraints on the American citizen’s out of fear of another large tragedy such as 9/11 and even more recently the Boston Bombing. The matter of if the added security precautions are therefore infringing on our Constitutional rights is a matter all in its own.
The American citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy but it is not an unalienable or fundamental right. In most cases a person’s choices affect the level of privacy they experience. When it comes to invasive surveillance programs like what has recently come to light in our own government, they are most certainly unethical, but a violation of a person’s right is not the case. Although the Constitution has articles that may imply various rights of privacy, there is no clear statement of such a right in the Constitution itself. Privacy rights are inferred from the Bill of Rights, and specifically the Fourth
Connecticut, (1965), which overturned a Connecticut law prohibiting doctors from counseling married couples on the use of birth control. The Court held that the state had no interest interfering in communication between a doctor and patient, that the discussion was private. Griswold set the precedent used to legalize abortion in Roe v. Wade, (1973) and to decriminalize intimate sexual practices between two (or more) consenting adults in Lawrence v. Texas, (2003). Cruzan v Missouri Department of Health (1990) stated that individuals have a liberty interest that includes the right to make decisions to terminate life-prolonging medical