Foreword to the Sullivan Lecture Essay: Is Privacy on Life Support?

The recent technological changes coupled with world events (with unknowable variables) conspire to undermine privacy. What should the modern balance be? Can the community we call "government" follow our every movement? May it collect our commercial and personal information at will? Is it entitled to know whom we call, text, and e-mail? Can it constitutionally listen to our phone calls, read our texts, and catalogue our e-mail? One hundred years ago, even assuming the technology existed, this sort of surveillance by the federal government would have been impermissible.