Congress isn’t qualified to judge the appropriate balance between privacy and security, according to Sen. Tim Kaine, because they find the concept of privacy too unrelatable.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2580961
We’re different from the American public in a whole lot of ways,” the Virginia Democrat told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Tuesday. “But I would argue there is no area where we are fundamentally more different in that we have long ago surrendered any expectation of privacy, and we have forgotten what it is to have an expectation of privacy.”
“I started in politics in 1994, and it was pre-YouTube, and essentially pre-Internet,” Kaine said. “I still at that point as a city councilperson had some expectation of privacy. But I have none now, nor does anybody else in my line of work.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2588033
“So if you give us the task of striking a balance between privacy and security, first, we will over-value security. Of course we should, that should be the top priority of everybody in Congress,” he said. “But we will undervalue privacy, because we’ve forgotten what it’s like to have any privacy. And so if trying to strike that balance is something that’s for Congress, we’re going to strike it in a way that I don’t think will fairly take into account the legitimate privacy interests of the American citizens.”
He added that a bipartisan commission like the one proposed by his colleague, fellow Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, and House Homeland Security Chair Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, was a better way to make policy on the issue than for Congress to do it on its own.
“Congress is just not the right body to do that, and we would really be benefited by a commission of people that include folks that remember what it’s like to have a private sphere, and really respect the national security interest trying to respect that balance,” Kaine said.
