Week 5- a followup to last week's discussion

This is somewhat of a followup to last week's discussion about the hack of US government data.  My particular area of expertise is in global data privacy law.  I wrote my thesis on "The Right to be Forgotten" which is a developing concept in Europe that gives normal individuals the right to have data that's irrelevant or untimely removed from the Internet.  I found an article that discusses data privacy legislation in the US, especially in the wake of the US government hack.  (Wyden, 2015)  I wanted to discuss this article in terms of what it got right and wrong.

The article was written by Senator Ron Wyden, a democrat.  He claims that in response to the hack of the US government, Congress has proposed a bill called the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) that would allow the US government to get private information from private companies.  Later in the article, he concedes that the bill isn't meant to do that- it's simply too broadly worded and would allow the NSA to snoop at unprecedented levels.  On this measure, it's hard to tell whether Senator Wyden got it right.  Is the bill worded that broadly- probably.  That doesn't mean it will make it into law in that version.  Will the NSA use bill to collect private data?  I'd like to say no, but I'm not sure I believe that.  They probably would, given their recent history of going even farther.

But there's one issue in particular, near the end of the article, that is dead wrong.  Senator Wyden states that the bill shouldn't toss aside "long established protections for Americans' privacy."  When I initially read the article, I was unaware that it was written by a US Senator.  I believed it was a piece by a staff writer at The Guardian, a newspaper in the UK.  Much of Europe has the right to privacy.  If you think about their history, it makes sense.  Put modern digital privacy rights in the context of WW2 Germany.  When people ask and collect data about you, it hasn't turned out well for them.  Meanwhile, in the US, we strongly favor free speech.  This free speech isn't absolute, but it is extremely broad.  We call it the "marketplace of ideas" and we would rather have lots of information so that the citizens can make up their own mind about an issue.  This has caused great divergence in terms of online privacy rights.  In Europe, you can remove information about yourself.  In the US, once it's on the Internet, it's likely to stay there.  The difficulty is that it's hard to draw borders online.
So why does his statement bother me?  Because it's simply wrong.  There is no right to privacy in the US Constitution.  The Supreme Court has said that a right to privacy exists in the "penumbra" of the First Amendment.  In particular, it extends to a couple being allowed to keep private whether or not they are choosing to have a child.  Family matters, in other words.  Other information is sensitive and must be kept guarded such as health information.  The law governs who can legally access such information and what they can do with it.  But it is a complete overstatement to say that Americans have the right to privacy.  As a Senator, I wish Wyden knew this.  Furthermore, I wish he wasn't fueling an already stoked fire between the US and Europe by presenting false facts in major newspapers.

References:
Wyden, R. (2015, July 29). Congress' fix for high-profile hacks is yet another way to grab your private data. Retrieved September 29, 2015, from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/29/congress-stop-high-profile-hacks-reduce-your-privacy