Race, Privacy, and the NSA Prism Scandal

Recent revelations about the NSA's PRISM program has generated alarm about the state of privacy law in the United States. While some writers have begun to question the initial shock, I want to just take a moment to remind everyone that the history of privacy rhetoric has always had class, gender, and racial undertones. In our edited collection, Lovalerie King and I were able to publish Karla Holloway's great essay, "W.E.B. Du Bois and the Right to Privacy." There, she shows how it was two elite white men (Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis) who developed the legal concept, after journalists sought to report about one of their children's birthday parties. What makes Holloway's essay so good is that she shows how Warren and Brandeis basically urged a new constitutional right based on the expectations to which  white wealthy men believed they were entitled. The majority of Americans, then or now, have rarely been able to shut their mansion's gate and keep the world at bay. The rhetoric of privacy has benefitted some groups but more often it has been denied to women, racial minorities, or the poor in service of other supposed national interests. This "scandal" should remind us that there is much work still be to done in achieving the civil rights revolution and making sure the privacy of all peoples are respected and honored.