Speaker Summaries

Congressman Bob Barr spoke on: "Privacy - The Linchpin of Freedom."

Former Congressman Bob Barr believes that privacy is The Linchpin of Freedom as he explained at the Madison Forum luncheon meeting Monday, July 10.

The notion of privacy is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue or even a conservative issue, but one that cuts across the grain of all issues regarding what we have and protect in this country and really what freedom loving people all over the world ought to strive for.

Mr. Barr told about a discussion he had many years ago with Charles Canady, Chairman of the Constitution Sub-committee of the Judiciary Committee, of which Mr. Barr was also a member, during oversight hearings involving the FBI intercepting certain information, without court order, utilizing key words from people’s Internet or e-mail transmissions. The committee determined that the FBI was doing this outside what he and many others believed was an appropriate framework that required them to first go to a court in order to satisfy the legal burdens before they could invade a person’s privacy and gather that certain information from their e-mail transmissions. The FBI view was that the law requiring the government to satisfy certain legal burden before they can listen in to our telephone communications was silent as to the Internet, because when that law was passed in the 1960’s no one knew about the Internet.

The government said that because there is not a law that specifically prohibits the government from doing a thing that means it can do something, so they’re going to do it. Mr. Barr says this is a topsy-turvy view of our system of government. It really ought to be the exact opposite. However, that’s not the way government operates these days, whether it is a Republican or a Democrat leadership. Their view is unless you stop us from doing it, we are going to do it, and unless there is something in the law that says we, the government, cannot do something, we believe we have the authority to do it, so we’re going to do it. As long as we say it’s for national security then the public is going to be behind us. So even if you don’t like it, we’re probably going to continue doing it anyway.

In follow-up to the findings of the committee regarding Project Carnivore, Mr. Barr said he wanted to propose and move through the Judiciary Committee some legislation that up-dated these laws that related to the particular burden that government agents have before they can listen in on the communications of a person. He had suggested to Mr. Canady that they couch the hearing broadly in terms of right to privacy in updating federal laws as they relate to invasions of privacy, at least in the context of electronic communications. Mr. Canady said; “We can’t have in the Constitution Sub-committee a hearing on the right to privacy because there’s nothing in the Constitution about privacy. There’s no right to privacy in the Constitution”

Mr. Canady was absolutely correct. The word privacy doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution, either in the body or in any of the amendments, including the Bill of Rights. But that is hardly the end of any question about whether or not we have a right to privacy here in America. We do. It is, Mr. Barr believes, the most fundamental of the rights that we have.

He spoke of Ayn Rand, an eloquent believer in privacy and author of “The Fountainhead”, the story of an architect whose plans for a building were changed dramatically from the product of his intellect, so he destroyed the building. He was prosecuted, and in his trial he represented himself and made one argument to the jury, the notion of privacy as the true lynchpin of civilization itself. In her writings, Ayn Rand breaks history into two phases, the pre civilized world where everything is communal – physical property, ideas, spouses – everything, and the civilized society where the notion of privacy sets men free from other men.

Mr. Barr says that when the founding fathers took those notions of civilization - how you protect it, how you foster it in a free society - they clearly understood privacy. The provisions in the Bill of Rights don’t mention privacy, but like so many fundamental concepts, they are not mentioned in the Constitution, because they don’t need to be. They are presumed. They are foundational principles. When you look at the individual portions of the Bill of Rights from the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, the Second Amendment freedom to bear arms, the Fourth Amendment protection of selves, papers, belongings, etc, from government intrusion; all of these provisions have the notion of privacy. Were it not for the notion of privacy and the recognition that we are entitled, as creatures of God, free men and women in a society, to have our ideas, our property, there would be no reason to have any of those provisions in the Bill of Rights. Why would you need a Second Amendment? You would have nothing to protect. Why would you need a Fourth Amendment if you didn’t have a fundamental right to privacy? You wouldn’t need any of those. They are all based on the notion of privacy, your ideas, your property, your family, and you have a right to protect it.

Eventually the Judiciary Committee did pass legislation pertaining to privacy, but it didn’t pass the House. Mr. Barr said it was very enlightening to him that it’s very difficult to get people to think of the notion of privacy as a foundational principle. Even in the post-9/11 world when privacy is under assault in this country as never before in our history, it’s still very difficult to get people to think about it at all. We might get them to be concerned about a particular phone call or the sanctity of the integrity of their bank accounts to be free from government snooping. But it’s very difficult to get people to think about it much more broadly as a fundamental notion of what civilization is. Even if the government has a good reason to invade your privacy – law process, national defense - ; we should be willing to say to government: “Hold on there. You may have a good reason for wanting to get this information. You’re protecting us from Al-Qaida, but you still have to do it according to law”. He says it drives him crazy that a Republican Administration, which should have a high regard for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, says; “Those things don’t matter. The only thing that matters is the most important responsibility of government to protect us from acts of terrorism.” That is not the most important responsibility of government. The most important responsibility of our government, as we have laid it out in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, is not to protect us from acts of terrorism. It is to protect our way of life, our civil liberties.

Mr. Barr says he has no problem, as most Americans don’t, with the government, in appropriate circumstances, listening in on conversations, if they have a good reason for doing so, if they follow the minimum requirements of the law, which are fairly minimal, but if we are willing to say; OK, the government can, under the US Patriot Act, get access to John or Jane Doe’s medical records, business records, financial records, education records, based on nothing more than they want it because they are conducting an anti-terrorist investigation, then we have basically thrown the notion of privacy out the window. Because, no longer, as heretofore, are we requiring the government to have a good reason, a suspicion that we have done something wrong before they invade our privacy. And that’s why so much of what’s going on, whether it involves the NSA spying, or the US Patriot Act provisions, is to him so troubling. The notion that because a president, any president declares that he is operating as Commander in Chief and how dare you question me, is really troubling, because we ought to question these sorts of things, not because we don’t want the government to do these things, but we want them done according to the rule of law. The Fourth Amendment says you can’t invade a person’s privacy unless you have a reasonable suspicion that they have done something wrong. We have two choices, either amend the Constitution or follow the Constitution, follow the law.

Mr. Barr said he didn’t think that was too much to ask of any government, Republican or Democrat. He appreciated the fact that Madison Forum members are concerned about these issues and thanked the group for asking him to speak on the subject.

Questions and discussion covered subjects such as the genesis and subsequent provisions of the Patriot Act, the actions of judges in allowing too much leeway in search and seizure, unreasonable NSA wiretapping, and some of the various activities of the FBI and the CIA.

Mickey Lloyd, Director of Homeland Security/Director of Public Safety, Cobb County, with an overview.

Mickey Lloyd, Director of Homeland Security/Director of Public Safety, Cobb County, told Madison Forum members at the July 29 breakfast meeting that he has the best job in the world.

Ex navy; ex baseball player; Atlanta police force for 30 years; Retired as Deputy Chief of Police; Internal Affairs with Georgia State Police, Mr. Lloyd was appointed, after 9/11, as Deputy Commissioner of Homeland Security by Gov Barnes, After losing the position due to the party change, he applied to Cobb County for his present position, and he says it was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Mr. Lloyd says in Cobb County, as opposed to other places he has worked, the department pretty much gets what it needs for public safety and pretty much what they want. It’s not an easy sell. They have to justify everything they do. The Department received several federal grants the first few years he was in office. The County was helped in this because, when he was with the state, he helped write the standards for applying for grants, and he says their philosophy is they never ask for anything on a grant that they wouldn’t buy anyway.

Cobb County has about 1532 people in Public Safety with an overall budget of $134 million. The Department is responsible for police, fire, emergency services which includes 911 and communications, animal control, Intelligence, narcotics, homeland security, and public safety training. Mr. Lloyd says three things he can’t afford to delegate. First is the budget because he is ultimately responsible for it. Next is intelligence, which does undercover work gathering information. Next is training. He says there is nothing more important in public safety than training. This is the core, and the training is continuous, including his own.

Homeland security is also important. The issue at hand is to get as much information on our enemy who is dedicated to terror attacks on the United States, our allies, and our way of life. Terror is alive and well, and it is here. People don’t hear a lot about it because the department doesn’t want to terrorize the people in our county. This information comes from the public. Citizens are the department’s most important asset, because we know what is unusual or out of place in our neighborhoods. All information that comes in through the terrorism hotline is investigated.

The Cobb County Emergency Management organization is led by County Manager David Hankerson. Next is the Homeland Security Task force co-chaired by Mr. Lloyd and Sheriff Warren. They work together constantly so, when necessary, they can pull in all resources from the cities and the county - police chiefs, fire departments, EMT, DOT, the health department, the finance department, and others, to respond to urgent situations or plan for upcoming problems.

The big project now is changing emergency communications from analog to digital to allow Cobb County departments and other jurisdictions to talk to one another. The SPLOST will allow the county to finish this system in a couple of years, as opposed to seven or eight years, through the part of the tax that goes to public safety.

Mr. Lloyd talked about JHAT, the Cobb County Joint Hazard Assessment Team. The teams are made up of members of the police department, the fire department, and the sheriff’s department to identify critical infrastructure sites in the county.

The department also studies critical locations to determine how to get emergency personnel in and out safely in case of an incident, and how to implement rescue operations.

Mr. Lloyd encouraged all citizens to become stakeholders in the homeland security effort. He mentioned the many training classes held in Cobb County for civilians in various aspects of public safety, crime prevention and awareness, and homeland security. There is the Citizens Public Safety Academy, which runs two classes a year for ten weeks each. There is Citizens Emergency Response Training, which has over 400 volunteer members who are trained in neighborhood response to any event. They learn how to stabilize a situation until the response team arrives.

Mr. Lloyd says homeland security in Cobb County is planning, and practicing, and getting citizens involved, and with all these groups working together we can be successful in keeping the county prepared.

To report any unusual activity, the Eyes on Cobb 24-hour Tip Line phone number is – (770) 590-5569