Safety versus privacy: tradeoffs and implications

Public Safety vs. Individual Rights

The balance between public safety and individual rights is a delicate one. Assuring public safety as well as privacy and freedom from unnecessary harassment and security procedures is usually not all that hard to pull off but there are situations and instances where it can be very dicey. Easy examples that come to mind are political events, DUI checkpoints and so forth. Some say all the stops should be pulled out in such events and/or that no better options exist. Other people decry and condemn anything that infringes upon the rights or convenience of those that are not doing anything wrong. While not the cleanest solution, the balance that must be struck is somewhere in the middle and it is rare that all sides are placated and left with no complaints.

Analysis

One dimension of the public safety vs. personal rights debate is the question of who has the authority to stop, frisk, search and otherwise infringe on the rights of others to move about and do things as they please. Government officials and policy are generally given much more leeway than private citizens and security personnel as the former typically has arrest and/or prosecutorial powers while the latter hardly ever do. However, there are exceptions to this rule. For example, any citizen can intervene at their discretion when a felony is in progress by either doing what they can to stop the crime in progress or at least report the crime to the proper government authorities such as the police, child protective services or whichever agency or entity should be made aware. However, when guilt or innocence is less certain and more ambiguous, what a private citizen, including a security guard, can do gets a lot murkier and can vary literally from county to county, from city to city and from state to state. There are also federal standards that can come into play depending on the situation and location (OGE, 2014).

When looking at the same dichotomy through a search and seizure perspective, the opposite is usually true. Governmental organizations, including police, are generally bound by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution but the same is not true of private businesses and security personnel so long as they do not cross certain lines. Private businesses would be well within their rights to secure and search their own premises and computers and even private businesses generally have the right to search areas and/or verify receipts and such. However, both groups are bound by limitations that unduly limit privacy and/or freedom of movement. Government agencies can detain someone in most cases but a security person or private citizen has to have a legally allowable reason to do so. Otherwise, a private citizen could be on the hook for a false imprisonment charge. For people in the public areas and not on private property, there generally has to be cause for search or seizure no matter who is trying to do the searching or why they are doing it (Nolo, 2014).

Regarding use of force, the rules for police, corrections and private security forces are all different and for good reason. Police can generally stop and detain people as they see fit but there has to be some reason for it much of the time, known as probable cause. This could be a person matching a suspect description, someone in the process of committing a crime or someone who is generally acting suspiciously such as being in a business parking lot in the middle of the night. Corrections personnel generally can restrict and move people as they see fit short of using excessive force that is not called for or necessary. Private security, unless they see a crime in progress, would generally just have to notify the governmental authorities such as the police if they see something amiss but even a security guard can defend themselves or someone else if danger is imminent and in progress (Crime Doctor, 2014).