Adam Liptak has an aptly titled article in the New York Times, "The Turducken Approach to Privacy Law." He quotes Chief Judge Kozinski who asks, "Is there a constitutional right to informational privacy?" He asserts that there's an absence of Supreme Court precedent and goes on to say: "It’s a bit like building a dinosaur from a jawbone or skull fragment, and the result looks more like a turducken. We have a grab-bag of cases on specific issues, but no theory as to what this right (if it exists) is all about.”
(Turducken is a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey.) Perhaps, it is time for the Supreme Court to weigh in, and the case of Nelson v. NSA, in which scientists challenge the unduly intrusive nature of background checks by the NSA, is the case to do it as Chief Judge Kozinski suggests. Alternatively, Congress should consider comprehensive informational privacy safeguards.
With reports like the one that Sprint released cell phone records and GPS data to police without a warrant over 8 million times, it's clear that the turducken approach isn't working.
