recollect
transitive verb
intransitive verb
— Merriam-Webster
Dates back to watching live television coverage of the US Senate Watergate hearings for me, and the too-often repeated phrase, “I do not recollect.”
One of the more challenging areas of restraint for me is when someone rationalizes unbridled access to someone else’s information by arguing, “Well, if you don’t have anything to hide, you shouldn’t have any objection.”
What could it hurt?
Naïvely, and, more importantly — dangerously — this position fails to recognize the difference between data and intelligence. The former is raw, unconsidered information. The latter adds interpretation to that record of the former.
So, to you and me, “667 Main Street, Apartment 16,” is just an address. But coded into a database that runs character strings without spaces, apartment information preceding building, the number “16667” appears in a string. And it’s only a matter of time before some intelligence person sees the three of those sixes together in an apartment-first, street-second layout, and draws “the only possible conclusion,” ie, “mark of the devil!”
Stop and think about some of the best thriller-genre story lines. “Mistaken identity” is really nothing more than otherwise innocent data being taken the wrong way. Happens all the time.
And, as a matter of fact, so much so, I’m guessing, that folks who were here long before me and undoubtedly a lot smarter than I am, felt it important enough to spell out as a prohibition.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
As arguments go, Fourth Amendment trumps rationalization for riffling through my underwear drawer. At least as far as I’m concerned.
How ’bout you?
This question is opposite to the extreme of the more often-uttered lament that “government should do more to help folks stay married.”
In other words: Does the government have an interest in discouraging lifelong unions?
Unquestionably. It does.
Think about it. Although I’m not a lawyer (and don’t play one on TV), my understanding is that “marital privilege” is a phrase describing the right of a husband and wife not to testify against one another in court. Or, for that matter, any other legal proceeding.
Even if not universally applicable to courtrooms, we’ve gotta believe the idea instructs a lot of behavior at the ground level.
Recall an episode or two of The Sopranos where Adrianna thought this might help her out of a pickle. Or White House Counsel John Dean, who inexplicably married his girlfriend on the eve of giving testimony on “Watergate.”
The divorce process has even more potential. Issue areas need not be bounded by any pesky concern about “relevancy,” because, you know: Anything and everything is said to be by-definition relevant to matters concerning “the best interests of the minor children,” we’re told.
On top of that, the emotional stir of divorce actually seems to have an inherent knack for reaching into the sole of moviation for a lot of individuals such that they pro-actively, willingly dish the dirt on their former loves. The marketed image of legal system “equity” (meaning, this is a place to get even, if nowhere else) creates motive to provide detailed answers to questions “the system” could never have thought to ask.
Imagine:
It all strikes me as a lot more efficient and a lot less time-consuming than any of that bulky data-acquisition stuff George Orwell thought would be needed to make his science-fiction world work in 1984.
Maybe no one is acting on this. But we can’t say that government has no motive to do so.