The government’s preoccupation with national security has eased with the  new administration, but monitoring and surveillance remain a U.S. priority.

Initiatives to keep tabs on citizens show no signs of withering away. The assumption seems to be that we should accept the tightening reins of government because they are now in more benevolent hands.

But advances in technology should raise concerns that relatively benign security measures could be put to intrusive use. Congress, the courts and state governments must resist efforts to sacrifice personal privacy in the name of national security.

For one thing, we simply do not know the lengths to which the government is routinely using telecommunications surveillance within the U.S. Since the current administration has resisted attempts to open this area to scrutiny, Congress must continue to press for answers.

For another, electronic monitoring is becoming a reality for many of us, and few, if any, laws limit the use of information gathered this way. Electronic tags are now embedded in all new passports, and in drivers’ licenses modified to comply with Real ID requirements.

Radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips are said to be needed to verify that documents are legitimate, but it turns out that this data is not only available to customs agents and airport screeners. According to a recent Associated Press report, it can be picked up from at least 30 feet away, and researchers are working to extend this reach with smart antennas and computers.

Demonstrating the vulnerability of RFID chips for the Associated Press, a hacker using an antenna and reader was able to download the serial numbers of two electronic passport cards in 20 minutes in downtown San Francisco, without leaving his car.

In the  case of passports, the data is encrypted, but there  is no assurance that states will provide such protection for Real ID licenses. And privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation warn that the long term danger is that the tags will allow tracking of anyone and everyone. This raises the possibility that in the near future, a person’s location and movements could be captured for display at any time on government or corporate computer screens.

The development of such a  surveillance network may seem unlikely, but privacy advocates believe private organizations will take a keen interest in tracking the movements of individuals by their RFID  chips. It may be deemed prudent, and perhaps profitable, to track individuals in shopping malls, airports and on college campuses. Inevitably, the theory goes, data brokers will collect this streaming data, making it available to the government and anyone else willing to pay for it.

It’s up to government to make sure that no one, not even government agencies, can put technology to intrusive use. The American people do not want to trade their privacy for a tighter security system.

— Questions? Comments? Contact Kristen Schulze Muszynski or Nick Cowenhoven at 282-1535 or kristenm@journaltribune.com or nickc@journaltribune.com.