Government's Privacy Rights Don't Exceed the Public's
By Noah Feldman
When it comes to metadata, is turnabout fair play? The New Jersey Supreme Court will decide that question in a fiendishly clever case brought by a libertarian who is demanding the e-mail logs of town officials under the state’s Open Public Records Act.
What makes the case so piquant is that, as Edward Snowden’s leaks revealed, the federal government engaged in bulk metadata collection under a questionable interpretation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The authorization relied on for the data collection has since expired, but the legal principle remains. The New Jersey lawsuit in effect asks: if metadata isn’t that private, why not give the public access to the government’s records of who contacted whom, and when?
As if on cue, lawyers representing local New Jersey officials gave an answer that echoes the concerns that privacy advocates have been raising for years about metadata: they said you could figure out so much information from metadata that it would compromise confidentiality. “There is a great deal of concern about citizens finding out who the chiefs of police are communicating with, and with what frequency,” the lawyers told reporters. “A list of all the people a chief of police is communicating with could compromise investigations and reveal the identities of victims of crimes and witnesses while an investigation is unfolding.”
That’s correct, of course -- and it’s also the point of the lawsuit. The case was brought by John Paff, chairman of the Open Government Advocacy Project of the New Jersey Libertarian Party. His position is being supported by the New Jersey American Civil Liberties Union as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an important privacy watchdog.
In 2013, Paff requested a log of e-mails -- sender, recipient, date and subject -- made by the chief of police and town clerk of Galloway Township for a two-week period in June of that year. Paff says he doesn’t remember exactly why he chose that period, but the information-technology specialist in charge of the records testified that the period corresponded to an internal investigation by the police chief.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-25/government-s-privacy-rights-don-t-exceed-the-public-s
