A Survey of Recent Threats to Privacy Rights

It comes as no surprise to some of us that the terrorist events of September 11th 2001 have prompted governments around the globe to strengthen legislative and other attacks on the civil liberties of their citizens. Privacy is one such liberty under jeopardy. For our purposes, we will choose for a working definition of privacy the right to determine when, how and to what extent information about ourselves is communicated to others. This definition reflects the view of privacy that a German court has called 'informational self-determination'. In this paper we will restrict ourselves to comments on governmental attempts to abridge or deny this specific right through two related techniques: the interception of internet communications and the legal restrictions placed on encryption.