How 9/11 continues to affect our privacy rights

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, laws have been tightened and measures have been introduced that affect our privacy and digital rights.

As we approach the 20-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, many are reflecting on what has changed not only in the US but around the world since that day. Outside of foreign policy, one of the most dramatic changes made, was laws and practices that directly impact our privacy and digital rights. 

One of the most impactful legislative changes was the passing of the Patriot Act which was a rushed and reactionary response passed only 45 days after the attacks and greatly weakened privacy laws and expanded surveillance for the US intelligence agencies.  

The Patriot Act gave the US government the authority to monitor your phone, email, bank, and credit information, and all your online activity without and most without the need for a warrant or judge’s approval. These are generally issued through National Security Letters (NSLs) which are issued by the FBI without a judge’s approval. 

What is most shocking is that if you even peer into a small window of time following the passing of this law, between 2003 and 2006 the FBI issued 192,499 NSLs, meaning they collected the records and online activity of nearly 200,000 people and in the end only convicted one person.

Now, many have argued that stopping one terrorist might be worth giving up some security for, but according to the ACLU, the conviction would have occurred without the Patriot Act. 

While many Americans at the time seemed willing to give up a certain level of privacy, a feeling that can be partially justified by the fact that 9/11 was a terrifying event and many were scared another attack would be carried out. However, the truth was much worse we later learned with the leaks of Edward Snowden. The US government had far more power based on law enforcements and the government’s own interpretations of the laws vague language used in the Patriot Act, and other legislation. This meant, without a warrant, the US government was able to monitor anyone they wanted and needed little to know justification to do so other than some belief you may be up to “no good”.

Unfortunately, the definition of “no good” is, was left to the discretion of the federal agency seeking to collect and or monitor your activity. 

Some may also believe this was a partisan issue seeing as how the act was passed under a Republican president, but many forget it was a Democratic Party controlled senate which voted overwhelming to pass it. It has also been extended by Democratic presidents before it finally died in 2020 after failing to get extended.

However, even without the Patriot Act, our post-9/11 world still sees many provisions in the act, and even more we didn’t even know about that pre-date the 9/11 attacks still in regular practice today. This means it’s no longer a conspiracy theory to acknowledge that we live in a surveillance state, because this is exactly the goal. More information, faster access to that information, and fewer barriers to that information.

Today, we see the tools and data collection being used in COVID-19 pandemic world. Cell phone location tracing, monitoring the movements of individuals, and increased data mining tactics they used under the Patriot Act. 

Around the globe, government agencies are using the pandemic to expand their reach and access to data in the same of public safety. According to Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch,

“The coronavirus outbreak is proving to be one of those landmarks in the history of the spread of mass surveillance in China.”

And it’s not just China. The US government has used COVID-19 to expand its processing and handling of personal information. According to the EFF:

“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) leads our nation’s efforts to contain infectious diseases. Thus, CDC for decades has managed the federal government’s processing of personal data about infection. It did so during the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak. But in July 2020, HHS stripped this tracking authority from the CDC, and transferred it to a new program called ‘HHS Protect.”

9/11 was not the first tragedy to change our privacy rights, COVID-19 will not be the last if we continue to rely on world governments to offer us privacy rights. 

This makes taking privacy in your own hands that much more important. Using private search engines, private email, private communication tools, and even operating systems become paramount to user privacy because government after government has used its power and exploited countless tragedies to take privacy rights away from you.

Today’s privacy and technology landscape looks vastly different since 9/11 even with the 2020 expiration of the Patriot Act. That is because one rights are taken away, they are nearly impossible to get back. That is, unless you take the steps to ensure you never give them your data in the first place.

Dan Arel is a privacy and digital rights activist, founder and curator of ThinkPrivacy.ch, as well as an award-winning journalist, and best-selling author. His work has appeared in the Huff Post, OpenSource, Hacker Noon, Time Magazine, and more. You can follow him on Twitter @danarel.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Startpage.