190665 "War on Terrorism" and invasion of privacy

Monday, October 27, 2008: 4:35 PM

H. Jack Geiger, MD, MSciHyg , Logan Professor of Community Medicine, City University of New York Medical School, New York, NY
The “War on Terrorism,” unbounded in scope, geographic area, and duration, has been used to justify the systematic assault on the privacy of American citizens and residents, in the form of wiretapping on their telephone and other communications without a court-approved warrant or showing of probable cause. This is also an assault on the separation of powers and the constitutional restrains on the authority of the executive branch, exemplified by specific past Congressional legislation constraining warrantless eavesdropping without judicial oversight, and an assault on corporate accountability, in the form of impunity for telecommunications firms that cooperated in breaking the law. Congress is now complicit in these assaults, providing retroactive corporate immunity and actually broadening the scope of such eavesdropping, in so-called “compromise” legislation.

Learning Objectives:
Participants will: 1) Recognize the history of these arrogations of power by the executive branch; 2) Describe the constitutional issues raised by these erosions of civil liberties; and 3) Evalauate the implications of warrantless wiretapping for the privacy of citizen communication.

Keywords: Surveillance, Privacy

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Dr. H. Jack Geiger is a leader in the field of social medicine and in the global movement for health and human rights. For more than half a century, Dr. Geiger has championed the idea that medicine, beyond treating the individual, can be a point of entry for advancing human rights and social change with the power to transform entire communities.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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