Electronic Privacy

Re “ . . . And Constitutional Rights Lag Behind,” Commentary, Dec. 19:

I, too, am greatly concerned over government’s pernicious encroachment on our right to privacy. Bart Kosko’s comments regarding the FBI’s difficulty in establishing wiretaps in a few cases are accurate. However, with the advent of a digital telephone system throughout the U.S., the FBI has also seen and seized a great opportunity--the implementation of a capability to conduct wiretaps/electronic eavesdropping from the comfort of its own offices.

The great problem we will all have is when the government finally says that we can no longer use our own systems, only those which they can read. We were asleep at the wheel when we allowed the FBI’s anti-privacy bill to pass. I shudder to think what our next lapse in attention may bring.

L. GARY GOLDMAN

Los Angeles

* Kosko’s essay hit an important note. We are now in the Information Age. Information and analytical ability are the new commodities of choice. What we type, say and think are becoming increasingly more valuable in this computer era.

America (and the world) needs to update its laws and ideas. Ideas are not just conveyed through the written word or told down at the old tavern. Nor are they just methods of convincing people. They are the marketable commodity. Today we talk on bulletin boards and over cellular phones. Legislation needs to be updated. Legislation designed for a printing-press era and an industrial economy needs to be updated for the post-Cold War information era.

JAMES WILDER

San Diego