To the Editor:
Re “Protect Our Right to Anonymity,” by Jeffrey Rosen (Op-Ed, Sept. 13):
Mr. Rosen is right to worry about the fact that enhanced technology is a danger to anonymity. But it is unclear why he thinks that anonymity is something to which we have a constitutional right.
The Fourth Amendment protects the right to privacy, but privacy is not the same as anonymity.
I have the right that the state not use intrusive means (breaking the lock on my diary, placing a listening device on my phone, cracking e-mail encryption, training a thermal imager on my home) without judicial permission to acquire information about me.
But I have no judicially protected right that the state not acquire such information by nonintrusive means. If it were otherwise, then a police officer’s recognizing me while walking down the street would, all by itself, infringe my Fourth Amendment rights.
SAMUEL C. RICKLESS
San Diego, Sept. 14, 2011
The writer is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.