Posted by
JohnRAHGalt on Sunday, November 09, 2008 12:00:00 AM
The recent activities of Helen Jones-Kelley bring into focus the sometimes hotly debated “right to privacy”. Jones-Kelley is the Ohio Job and Family Service bureaucrat who ordered investigations on Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher after he questioned Barak Obama about his tax policy. 
It is Federal law that telephone conversations cannot be recorded without notification to at least one participant. Mail cannot be opened without a warrant issued by a judge. Government records on individuals are subject to sunshine laws; they cannot be kept without your knowledge, and you have rights to view the information held via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. These rules exist is to protect us from government.
However, after the terrorist attack of 9/11, it became popular opinion that many (or all) of these laws should be circumvented to protect us and our government from further attack.
In a well-meaning government, it would be of little consequence for government to track its citizens’ activities or engage in any of these measures. Unfortunately, governments are not always well-meaning. Records can be used against citizens, as in Joe The Plumber’s case, or in extreme cases forged to include incriminating activities.
Helen Jones-Kelley isn’t the only official to improperly access government records. There was a case where over 900 FBI records of political operatives were accessed by the White House. At the center of that scandal in 1996 was another female bureaucrat – Hillary Clinton.
Laws for the protection of privacy and openness of government must be defended, and the poorly named Patriot Act allowed to expire. The information collected by a well-meaning Bush government will now be transferred to the Obama administration; their agents have not shown well-meaning.