Tag: privacy rights
Right-Wing Media Insists Supreme Court

Even After Abortion Ruling, Right-Wing Media Scoff At Threat To Privacy Rights

In reaction to clear signs that the Supreme Court may take aim at marriage equality after overturning Roe v. Wade, right-wing media outlets are employing the same tactics they previously deployed against Roe by denying that the precedent protecting gay marriage is at risk while simultaneously calling for it to be repealed.

On June 24, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and the long-held precedent guaranteeing federal protection for abortion rights nationwide. As part of the ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas released a concurring opinion calling for the court to “reconsider” several other cases, namely those protecting same-sex sexual activity, access to contraception, and gay marriage. Both Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito have also previously expressed an interest in overturning Obergefell v. Hodges (the case establishing protections for same-sex marriages). Conservatives have already seized on the ruling to attack LGBTQ rights, with Alabama citing Dobbs14 times in a recent court filing presented in support of the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth.

Yet in the aftermath of the ruling, right-wing media have attempted to dismiss the genuine possibility that Obergefell could face the same fate as Roe, reflecting their earlier push to downplay the risks to Roe. Meanwhile, many right-wing outlets, including some of the same ones denying gay marriage is under threat, have called for Obergefell to be repealed.

Right-wing Media Claim Roe Ruling Doesn't Put Marriage Equality At Risk

The majority decision in Dobbs stated that the ruling did not set precedent for other cases unrelated to abortion. However, Thomas used the ruling to push for reconsideration of three other cases — Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down any remaining laws against same-sex sexual activity; Griswold v. Connecticut, which set the precedent protecting access to contraceptives; and Obergefell. Despite Thomas’ opinion and Alito’s previous statement suggesting support for overturning marriage equality, right-wing media argued that the precedent in the Dobbs ruling does not jeopardize Obergefell.

On June 24, Fox News guest Carrie Severino accused Democrats of “fearmongering” about the threat to marriage equality, adding, “Please don't pretend that it's going to have an impact on every other case in our society because it simply doesn't.” That night, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson similarly called the threat to marriage equality a “fearmongering talking point” and claimed President Joe Biden is “a liar” for noting the threat the ruling poses to the Obergefell.

Other Fox News personalities continued to push the claim that the Dobbs ruling exists in a vacuum and would not effect rights like gay marriage or contraception. They were joined by Newsmax’s show American Agenda, during which host Heather Childers called warnings by protesters and activists “fear-mongering” and guest Erin Elmore of Turning Point USA claimed that “the left is using fear in saying what’s going to happen to gay marriage or interracial marriage or the right to contraception.”

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board also said on June 24 that the “political left is making much of Justice Clarence Thomas’ argument.” The editorial asserted that Obergefell relied on stronger precedent than Roe because it made possible myriad marriage contracts across the United States, suggesting that Thomas had shown he would not approach the case in the same fashion. Also, during the June 24 episode of the Journal’s podcast Potomac Watch, members of the editorial board Kimberley Strassel and Kyle Peterson argued gay marriage was not put at risk by the ruling. Peterson said, “I am very skeptical that the Supreme Court would say those people can be married today and not married tomorrow in the United States” — which is in fact what the court had done that very same day for more than 33 million people’s ability to exercise their reproductive autonomy.

Adding a degree of cognitive dissonance, some of those adamantly asserting that Roe’s overturning did not endanger LGBTQ rights simultaneously called for Obergefell to be overturned. On the June 24 edition of his radio show, Fox News’ Sean Hannity called fear that Dobbs will be used against the gay community “left-wing lunacy” and cited the majority opinion to claim the ruling “applies to this case and this case alone.” However, on his show on June 27, Hannity discussed Thomas’ opinion, noting how it said “striking down Roe should open up the high court to review other precedents” before suggesting that striking down “Griswold, Lawrence, and some [other cases]” would be “the most democratic for this democratic republic that we live in.” The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro likewise tweeted on June 27 that the court “explicitly said they would NOT touch Obergefell or Griswold” but on June 24, a Daily Wire article had quoted him lamenting that, unlike Thomas, the other justices did not “have the actual stones” to attack cases like Obergefell.

Former Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes also called for the court to evaluate “what constitutes a marriage,” BlazeTV’s Steven Crowder argued that “states should have the right to regulate same-sex marriage,” and far-right grifter Mike Cernovich falsely claimed Obergefell resulted from “SCOTUS discover[ing] it hidden in a 200 year old text” and suggested it was “anti-democratic.” Following the ruling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also stated his support for removing protections for gay marriage, same-sex relations, and contraceptives, calling them “legislative issues.”

Conservative Pundits Made Same False Claims About Roe

In the years leading up to the Dobbs decision, right-wing media were equally adamant about Roe not being in jeopardy. During confirmation hearings for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, many of those now accusing people of fearmongering over the fate of Obergefellsaid the same about Roe.

Leading up to the confirmation hearings for Barrett in 2020, Shapiro said the possibility of Roe being overturned was “basically zero” and said, “Roe v. Wade is not going to be overturned.” Hannity defended Barrett, saying, “In spite of the lies the left will tell you, Judge Barrett has been described as personally pro-life but has expressed doubts that Roe v. Wade will ever be overturned.”

Two years before that, during Kavanaugh’s confirmation, those on the right said the same. Severino said a “head-on challenge to Roe” was “unlikely.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board argued that the strength of “stare decisis” meant the court was unlikely to overrule Roe — the exact same doctrine it cited in its June 24 editorial to dismiss concern for Obergefell.

As with the current round of rhetoric, Fox News was a major player in denying Roe would be overturned, often while making flawed arguments for why it should be.

Like Abortion Access, LGBTQ Rights Are Known To Enjoy Broad Public Support

As with their tactic on Roe, right-wing media outlets are intent on gaslighting their audiences into believing that the right to gay marriage is safe. They'll push that claim just long enough for the same powerful conservative organizations responsible for overturning federal abortion protections to overturn marriage equality. Two of the organizations that filed briefs in support of Dobbs, Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council, are both vocal critics of Obergefell and have leadership that is frequently featured on right-wing outlets like Fox News.

However, those in conservative media understand that fundamental rights like access to abortion and marriage have broad public support — 61% of Americans believe access to abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and support for gay marriage is at an all-time high, with 71 percent of Americans supporting it. The ability of right-wing actors to distract from and obfuscate the extreme policy they support is essential in their mission to make inroads with a broader audience.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Our Privacy Rights Are Being Stripped, Sold And Stolen

Our Privacy Rights Are Being Stripped, Sold And Stolen

Every company with a credit card, store card, website — or even a clerk who asks for your email and phone number at the checkout counter — is looking to peddle "data" about your buying habits. In many states, you have to hand over your fingerprints to renew your driver's license. Public and private spaces alike are constantly scanned by ever-more-observant surveillance cameras.

When we're asked for our Social Security number, many of us simply shrug our shoulders rather than raising hell. And if we happen to be poor, a footloose kid hanging on a street corner or a motorist guilty of "driving while black," for example, we're liable to be locked up and lost in a vast criminal "justice" system that considers itself not responsible for any rights, especially privacy rights.

Invasion of our privacy has become a way of life, so that when you stand up and demand to be left alone, you're likely to be pegged as a quaint holdover from days gone by, a whiner or, more likely, someone with something to hide — maybe even a terrorist! We're living in a culture in which individual rights have been sold and subjugated, all for database marketing and to keep the lid on the unruly masses.

This is an issue that has fallen off the political radar. Last I looked, the only people in Washington overly concerned with privacy were the corporate check writers and their pet politicians, eager to cover the tracks of their own financial quid pro quos.

In the brave new culture built around the marketplace, both corporate and government sectors have deemed private and personal information to be just another commodity.

In 1999, Congress passed the "financial modernization" bill, which was written with the help of banking industry lobbyists and allowed banks to collect and sell what they know about you without so much as a courtesy call to ask your permission. The only "protection" is that if a bank wants to share information from a credit report or loan application, it first must send you a notice with the chance to say no, a so-called opt-out provision.

But why is the burden on us to opt out of an agreement that lets someone else sell something that rightfully belongs to us? Before such an agreement can even be considered, they should be required to get our permission in advance — to ask us to "opt in," and to take it as "no" if they don't hear from us. Last year, Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA) introduced the Information Transparency and Personal Data Control Act, which would do just that. It would create a much-needed national consumer privacy standard. But such bills have been introduced before, and they have all been killed by members of Congress who have taken millions from interests that profit from the sale of your private information. The current bill has only 21 co-sponsors, all of whom are Democrats, and seems likely to die in committee.

While the finance guys are padding their fortunes by telling each other what we buy, where we buy it and on whose credit, there's another booming trade going on in the identity market.

Driven by dreams of a citizen databank available to government at every level, public officials are falling over each other trying to keep tabs on us. For example, the International Association of Chiefs of Police wants DNA samples from anyone who is arrested for any reason (as opposed to tried and convicted), and others want to take DNA samples from all newborns.

Filing our DNA in a government databank is about the ultimate in unreasonable search and seizure. DNA tracking is not just an assault on the principles embodied in our Constitution; it has very real, and frightening implications: Employers could deny you a job because your genes include a tendency toward certain diseases or health defects, and insurers might use DNA-derived information to impose limits on your health care coverage.

Not to be outdone, governments are not just compiling these databases to keep tabs on us unruly ones; they're selling the data alongside the corporate vendors. One estimate is that federal, state and local governments are making tens of millions a year selling public records to junk mailers and other businesses.

Ah, for the simpler days of 1984, when George Orwell imagined that all this high-tech snooping and file gathering would be used to spot and snuff out society's troublemakers and dissenters before they threatened the system.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America's ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.

Weekend Reader: ‘The Naked Society’

Weekend Reader: ‘The Naked Society’

Today the Weekend Reader brings you The Naked Society, by journalist and author Vance Packard. This 1964 classic was certainly far ahead of its time, discussing the dangers of new technology infringing upon our right to privacy. While worrisome then — with new developments in surveillance methods during the 1960s — it is far more salient today. The excerpt below is from the new introduction to The Naked Society by historian and journalist Rick Perlstein. As Perlstein points out, Packard was justified in his concern about the privacy rights of Americans and government overreach. Unfortunately, we now accept these invasions of privacy as normal, instead of defending our civil liberties against intrusive businesses, educational institutions, and government. 

You can purchase the book here

There is nothing worse than dated social criticism. So when the good folks at Ig Publishing invited me to write this introduction, my initial reaction was skepticism. What could a jeremiad about the epidemic of Americans spying on one another, published in 1964—thirty years before the invention of the Internet, thirty-seven years before 9/11, written in an age when the gravest insults to civil liberties consisted of congressional committees asking “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party”—have to say to us now?

I picked up an ancient paperback copy of The Naked Society (“The explosive facts behind the hidden campaign to deprive Americans of their rights to privacy. Here’s how snoop devices are being employed by Big Government, Big Business, and Big Education in their sneak attack on YOU”). I began reading. I was in New York City—Penn Station, to be exact. I read Packard’s framing questions: “Are there loose in our modern world forces that threaten to annihilate everybody’s privacy? And if such forces are indeed loose, are they establishing the preconditions of totalitarianism that could endanger the personal freedom of modern man?” As I read this, I happened to notice a TV screen. Horrifying, apocalyptic images of buildings collapsing and shadowy terrorists alternated with messages like, “If you see anything suspicious, report it to an Amtrak employee.” And, “It’s nothing, you think. Can you be sure?” After all: “It doesn’t hurt to be alert.”

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I began reading with renewed, then steadily mounting, interest, my mind buzzing as the parallels between then and now presented themselves. Packard wrote, “The New York Police [have] about 200 plain-clothes men working virtually full time at wiretapping.” That was then. This is now: The New York Police spend $1 billion on an intelligence unit, led by an active-duty Central Intelligence Agency Official, to infiltrate the Muslim community and spy on mosques. (The NYPD admits the program has never produced a single terrorism lead.) Then: Packard quotes Sam Dash—who before becoming a household name as chief counsel of the Senate Watergate committee, was a leading civil liberties expert—that a “district attorney, in office, catches an occupational disease. He resents impediments in his way that prevent him from collecting evidence to convict criminals.” Now: Computer wizard Aaron Swartz earns an FBI investigation for the legal act of downloading federal court files; then, after harmlessly downloading too many scholarly articles from MIT’s computer system, he is indicted by the office of United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz for charges that could have brought him thirty-five years in prison. Experts say he should have earned a slap on the wrist, if that, but prosecutors hound him so mercilessly he commits suicide.

Then: Welfare inspectors in Kern and Alameda Counties, California, stage late-night raids on 500 houses to investigate whether there is a man living in the household so they can cut off relief. Now: Bills in states including Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina, West Virginia, Florida, and Wyoming propose drug tests for welfare recipients (Republicans in Congress have introduced bills to submit recipients of both welfare and unemployment insurance to drug tests), and state legislators in Tennessee consider a law to kick families off welfare if their kids get bad grades.

Then: “In cities where wiretapping was known to exist there was generally a sense of insecurity among professional people and people engaged in political life. Prominent persons were constantly afraid to use their telephones despite the fact that they were not engaged in any wrongdoing.” Now: The Justice Department secretly obtains two months of telephone records of at least twenty Associated Press reporters and editors, including for home phones and cell phones; as of this writing, the government will not say why it sought the records, or how, nor whether a grand jury was involved. They only would say that U.S. attorneys follow “all applicable laws, federal laws, federal regulations, and Department of Justice policies when issuing subpoenas for phone records of media organizations,” and that “we do not comment on ongoing criminal investigations.” Journalists have been both victims and perpetrators of such spying: just days before the AP story broke had come news that employees of Bloomberg News were availing themselves of a “Snoop” function that let them tap into the accounts of subscribers to the company’s financial information network.

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Then: Packard writes of his horror that “cabled TV” will allow the “possibility of getting ‘an instantaneous readout’ home by home of what millions of people are [watching] in the entire country in about fifty seconds.” Now: Regarding the cables that connect our computers to networks of servers around the world, there have been too many horror stories to count, and more on that below. Then, “In some instances undercover men have been sent into plants to report on workers’ attitudes toward the union that is recognized or is seeking union recognition, and to report on union strategy”; in one case a detective insinuated himself so effectively into a textile plant the rank and file voted him onto the employee bargaining community. Now—well, too many horror stories to count on the labor front, too, but a great place to start is Human Rights Watch’s 215-page report “Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart’s Violation of U.S. Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association” on how the world’s largest corporation and its owners “violate their employees’ basic rights with virtual impunity.”

By now you get the point. I have no doubt whatsoever that this is a book that should be read, and carefully. This runaway bestseller in its own time indicts us—not just because the privacy crisis that began taking shape in Packard’s own time has grown so much worse, but because nobody any longer writes bestsellers about it. Re-reading The Naked Society can help us understand why.

If you enjoyed this excerpt, purchase the full book here

Introduction by Rick Perlstein to The Naked Society by Vance Packard. Used by permission of the author and Ig Publishing.

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