Is Privacy Dead? Should Christians Care?

WE ARE ALREADY BEING TRACKED BY PHONES, DEBIT CARDS, AND WEBSITES. WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT CAMERAS? There has been an increasing rumble of voices declaring that citizens should submit to constant surveillance like government-accessed facial recognition and automated license plate readers (ALPRs like Flock Safety) because we already carry phones, swipe cards, and use social media. This is an error in constitutional understanding, logic, political philosophy, and theology. The ubiquitous nature of modern commercial tracking is no reason to adopt an attitude of fatalism regarding an expanding surveillance state, and we must not conflate private vendors collecting data with the mass surveillance apparatus of civil government. To do so is to misunderstand the biblical view of authority, liberty, and the social contract.

JURISDICTION: “You already carry a phone” is a catastrophic failure in understanding jurisdiction. John Locke, whose writings are the intellectual groundwork for the Declaration of Independence, drew a bright line between the private sector and civil government. In his Second Treatise of Government, he established that the purpose of uniting into a commonwealth is for the preservation of property, explicitly defined as “lives, liberties, and estates.” When a person carries a phone or uses their debit card, they have entered into a voluntary relationship within the private sphere. These private companies have no coercive power over your person; they cannot issue warrants, raid your home, or incarcerate you.

The Lockean division of authority is directly rooted in the Romans 13 boundaries of authority, which designates the state as the bearer of the sword as a minister of justice in order to punish the evildoer -not to perpetually monitor the innocent. In Deuteronomy 17, God forbids the civil magistrate from elevating itself into being an unaccountable overlord. The civil magistrate is our brother under the law, not our big brother living above it, or us as a whole. The authority held by the government includes direct power over life and liberty. Thus, the theological and constitutional restraints upon the state should be fiercely guarded. Arguing that consenting to targeted ads from a website means we should then surrender liberty to armed men with badges and prison keys is an abdication of the Christian doctrine of citizenship and the Lockean idea of consent.

Commercial tracking is done by private corporations, is by consent or contract, is voluntary, is limited by terms of service, and has the end of delivering targeted ads or information to increase the commercial value of a private entity. State surveillance, like Flock Cameras, is conducted by authorities who have a monopoly on the right to use force, is involuntary and universal, has an end of arrest, incarceration, or execution, and ought to be limited by the Fourth Amendment and Divine Justice, but arguably violates both. Simply put, commercial tracking and a surveillance state are fundamentally different in essence.

Accepting that pre-existing loss of privacy requires surrender of all related liberty is the logic of a madman. It is to suggest that because we willingly gave a thief a glass of water on the front lawn, we should now remove our door from its hinges. Further, it is a direct violation of the understanding that was a direct cause of the American Revolution. Americans are rejecting the Crown’s use of non-specific search warrants. John Adams wrote that it was a speech about this general surveillance in which “then and there the child Independence was born.”

General surveillance, such as ALPRs, violates the right to be secure in one’s person against searches that lack an articulable justification. This is directly rooted in the Biblical principle of private domain and the law of threshold, which our nation has interpreted to include one’s person, houses, papers, and effects. These camera dragnests are the permanent digital manifestation of the King’s Writ of Assistance, violating constitutional and biblical standards of justice by treating the entire citizenry as perpetual suspects.

It is argued that these tools are effective and help solve crimes. The same could be said of the government installing cameras in homes, as in Orwell’s 1984, or removing the requirement for consent and warrants altogether. I have no doubt that eliminating the need for search consent on traffic stops would remove more drugs and illegal weapons from the streets, but being “useful” does not make it lawful or righteous. We should be reminded of Franklin’s warning: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

THE STAKES: Networks like Flock capture billions of vehicle data points each month, turning our roads into a permanent, searchable database that tracks citizens’ movement. People made in the Imago Dei, suspected of no crime whatsoever, are having their every move tracked and recorded, for use by whoever may one day gain power. Imagine that power in the hands of a government wishing to track churchgoers during a pandemic, sidewalk counselors leaving an abortion clinic, or members of the public having voiced their opinion through their right to assemble.

​James Madison, the Constitution’s architect, warned about unchecked government power in Federalist No. 51. There he wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Every authority granted to the government should always be done so while understanding that power could be held by incredibly malevolent people. One important check on government power is the requirement of individualized suspicion. It must not be abandoned.

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis warned of “Conditioners,” elite technocrats who would control human society through stripping away moral boundaries. These mass surveillance networks are the physical manifestation of that idea, stripping away the moral boundary of human privacy and conditioning society to submit to Big Brother always watching. As we trade the dignity of navigating freely for the feigned security of constant surveillance, we are abandoning the Lockean liberty and Biblical view of man upon which our nation was founded.

​It is dishonoring to God if we fail to steward our free Republic by throwing up our hands and declaring privacy to be dead. God has delegated the magistrate with authority to carry out the assigned duty of suppressing evil, but that duty must be fulfilled within the bounds of constitutional due process and biblical justice. Those boundaries demand individualized suspicion, more than one witness, legal standards of probable cause, and duly justified specific warrants. We must reject the fatalism that relates commercial tracking to government surveillance.

Mass surveillance is un-American, violates biblical jurisdiction, and will almost certainly be used, as already in other places, to suppress Christian liberty and basic human rights. It must be rejected outright. A corporation knowing what was in your grocery cart last Thursday is no manner of justification for the state violating biblical authority or moral liberty to track your family’s movements each time your car leaves the driveway.

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