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Inter Arma Silent Leges

Wartime Privacy Cicero is credited with coining the Latin phrase " inter arma silent leges " – among arms, the laws are silent. The phrase has since been used in US Supreme Court cases such as ex Parte Milligan, ruling on the justifiability of suspending habeas corpus during the civil war, by Justice Antonin Scalia in a dissenting opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and by a cavalcade of recent journalists discussing the constitutionality and legality of Patriot Act legislation. This pithy aphorism reflects the exceptional nature of war and, for the government, the subordination of all other executive and legislative concerns to the interests of national security. Wartime is when government repression, encroachment upon civil liberties and violation of individual privacy is most justified. What good, so goes the argument, is a bit of civil liberty or personal confidentiality when the very existence and sovereignty of the nation is threatened? Time and again the United States government has invoked the exigencies of wartime to justify domestic surveillance, espionage and other covert activities. From the Revolutionary War, when Washington intercepted British letters, both civilian and military, to the Civil War, when Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and wiretapped telegraph lines, to the Cold War, where the covert operations of the FBI's COINTELPRO division used wiretapping, " surreptitious entry " and other methods of dubious legality with impunity, the United States has had a long and illustrious history of resorting to and permitting widespread violations of individual privacy during wartime.