Privacy vs. National Security: Where Do We Draw the Line?

Privacy is sacred and would normally be expected and preserved by an individual. Online privacy is no longer about the right to be left alone, but also includes the right not to be monitored. However, with the revelations made by United States National Security Agency former employee Edward Snowden that the government is spying on internet communications, individuals’ privacy can no longer be expected. Therefore, this paper is intended to evaluate law related to privacy protection in the digital domain, who should govern it and whether invasion to a person’s privacy is a necessary justification to preserve national security.

• Nooraneda Mutalip Laidey

• Cyberspace
• data protection
• national security
• privacy.

[1] Cbsnews.com, (2014). NSA surveillance exposed - CBS News. (Online)
Available at: http://www.cbsnews.com/feature/nsa-surveillance-exposed/
(Accessed 11 March 2015).
[2] Center for Constitutional Rights, (2014). How Far Will the Government
Go in Collecting and Storing All Our Personal Data? New FBI
Documents Shed Light on the Answer | Center for Constitutional Rights.
(Online) Available at: http://www.ccrjustice.org/how-far-willgovernment-
go-collecting-and-storing-all-our-personal-data%3F-newfbi-
documents-shed-ligh (Accessed 13 March 2015).
[3] Chow, E. & Voon, S., (2014). Leveraging Big Data. (Online) Available
at: http://foongchengleong.com/tag/malaysia-personal-data protectionact-
2010/ (Accessed 11 March 2015).
[4] ACM. Data Protection Commissioner (2015). (Online)Available at:
https://ico.org.uk/media/fororganisations/documents/1607/the_guide_to_
data_protection.pdf (Accessed on 10 March 2015)
[5] Edition.cnn.com, (2014). On WikiLeaks scandal, hacker says he didn't
want to be a 'coward' -CNN.com. (Online) Available at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/07/29/lamo.profile.wikileaks/ (Accessed
10 March 2015).
[6] Electronic Frontier Foundation, (2014). How the NSA's Domestic Spying
Program Works. (Online) Available at: https://www.eff.org/nsaspying/
how-it-works (Accessed 13 March 2015).
[7] Electronic Frontier Foundation, (2014). NSA Spying | Electronic
Frontier Foundation. (Online) Available at: https://www.eff.org/nsaspying
(Accessed 13 March 2015).
[8] European e-privacy Directive (2009/136/EC). (Online) Available at:
http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:337:0
011:0036:en:PDF
[9] Fawcett, M., (2014). Data Privacy -- Embrace the Positives. (Online)
Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2014/09/15/
dataprivacy/ (Accessed 10 March 2015).
[10] Friedman, E., (2001). Who Should Have Access to Your Information:
Privacy Through the Ethics Lens.. American Health Information
Management Association, 3(72), pp. 24-27.
[11] Google Spain SL, Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de
Datos, Mario Costeja González (2014) C-131/12
[12] Greenwald, G., MacAskill, E. (2013). NSA Prism program taps in to
user data of Apple, Google and others. (Online) Available at:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data
(Accessed 10 Oct. 2014).
[13] Gustke, C. (2013).Which countries are better at protecting privacy?
(Online) http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20130625-your-private-datais-
showing (Accessed: 11 March 2015).
[14] McFarland, M. (2012). Unauthorized Transmission and Use of Personal
Data (Online) Available at: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/
focusareas/technology/internet/privacy/unauthorized use.html (Accessed
on 11 March 2015).
[15] Nerney, P. (2007). An Introduction to Data Protection. (Online)
Available at: http://www.westtraining.ie/resources/
DataProtectionWestside.pdf (Accessed on 11 march 2015).
[16] Rouse, M., (2013). Data Privacy (Information Privacy). (Online)
Available at: http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/data-privacyinformation-
privacy (Accessed 11 March 2015).
[17] Un.org, (2014). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (Online)
Available at: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a12
(Accessed 10 March 2015).
[18] Wills, C. E., & Tatar, C. (2012, October). Understanding what they do
with what they know. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Workshop on
Privacy in the Electronic Society (pp. 13-18).