As it stands right now, there are a total of 27 amendments. A couple of them cancel each other out like the 21st amendment which repeals the 18th amendment prohibition on the manufacture, sale or transportation of alcoholic beverages.
Most United States citizens are probably not aware of what is written in those amendments. They may have memorized it long enough to pass a high school government or civics class, but that data has long since been purged to make room for more important things. Many Americans are probably unaware that it was not legal for the United States government to collect income taxes until they passed the 16th amendment or that a person could be President indefinitely until the two term limit was imposed by the 20th amendment.
Not casting stones, I myself could not tell you what most of them are. Most people are familiar with “taking the fifth” which implies using one’s 5th amendment right to not “be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”. Amendments such as the 1st amendment right that essentially defines the separation of church and state, the 2nd amendment right to bear arms, or the 4th amendment protecting you from unlawful search and seizure of your property are fairly common knowledge and are mentioned frequently in the media in support of various causes.
Having read through the amendments on the Findlaw.com web site though, I can’t find any amendment that explicitly protects a United States citizen’s right of privacy. The 14th amendment is often cited as the amendment which protects what Justice Louis Brandeis called the “right to be left alone”, but upon reading it, it appears that a fair amount of interpretation has to be allowed for in order to come to the conclusion that it inherently protects our privacy. The 1st, 4th and 5th amendments are also occasionally referred to in discussions of a right of privacy.
Of course, the 10th amendment explicitly grants authority to the individual states for any power not delegated to the United States Congress or prohibited explicitly in the Constitution of the United States. So, there may very well be provisions protecting privacy in state constitutions or state laws. There are also a number of statutes and regulations at both the federal and state levels which are based at least in part on the inferred right of privacy.
Unfortunately, privacy, and the protection of sensitive or personal information, seems to be legislated on an industry by industry basis. The Privacy Act of 1974 prevents the unauthorized disclosure of personal information held by the federal government. The Fair Credit Reporting Act protects information gathered by credit reporting agencies. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act grants parents authority over what information about their children (age 13 and under) can be collected by web sites.
As it relates to securing computer networks or data, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, HIPAA and GLBA all contain at least some guarantee of an individual’s right not to have their personal or confidential information exposed. These regulations mandate that companies take steps to ensure their customer’s data is secure and impose fines and penalties on companies that fail to do so.
California’s SB-1386 places a responsibility on companies operating in that state to inform customers when their data has been exposed or compromised in any way. If it weren’t for that California law, the recent debacle at ChoicePoint might never have been disclosed.
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