Abstract
This Article examines the development of the Matrix program and analyzes its effect on what Justices Warren and Brandeis termed the individual's "right to be let alone." To understand the Matrix's effect on individual privacy, one must scrutinize the program in the context of United States history.From the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Red Squads of the 1960s and 1970.
Part II of this Article examines how civil liberties often suffer unnecessarily in times of national crisis. Part III then discusses how this truism applies in the current "war on terror" and details the development and operation of the Matrix system, along with that of its predecessor, the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness. Both programs, like the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Red Squads before, raise serious privacy concerns and deserve additional scrutiny.
Finally, Part IV recognizes that, while the government should have the surveillance power necessary to strengthen national security, any exercise of the government's surveillance power must give "regard to the public good and to the sense of the people."' More specifically, Part IV analyzes the Matrix in the context of the constitutional protections of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. However, realizing that these protections may not be broad enough to effectively control the Matrix program, Part IV also discusses the possibility of involving state legislatures in the privacy battle.
Repository Citation
Thomas V. Burch,
"Doublethink"ing Privacy under the Multi-State Antiterrorism Information Exchange
, 29 Seton Hall Legis. J. 147
(2004),
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/1203