The word “privacy” means many different things to different people. One widely accepted meaning, however, is “the right to left alone,” as it was described by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in the Harvard Law Review of 1890. This cherished right is now under attack, and the primary culprits range from law enforcement agencies using surveillance systems, to government programs that collect and distribute your personal data, to public and private sector employers who are using the power of the paycheck to tell their employees what they can and cannot do in the privacy of their own homes.
From intrusive police surveillance technology to cell phone and email tracking programs to intrusive and unconstitutional drug testing policies that treat entire groups of Floridians like suspected criminals, governments are spying on us in ways the founders of our country could never have imagined. The ACLU of Florida works to make the public aware of the ways their personal data is being used and protect their right to privacy from government overreach.
