Law Commons^™

Introduction: Keeping Secrets, Dale Carpenter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

It has become a commonplace to say that September 11 changed everything. What the writer or speaker usually means by this is that Americans have re-calibrated their views on the relative importance of individual civil liberties and the common good. Like many other national traumas, September 11 may in historical hindsight be seen as a jolt that perhaps necessarily-but at any rate, temporarily-induced a retrenchment on rights.

But if the September-11-changed-everything idea overstates the significance of the event, it also understates the extent to which, at least in the area of privacy, some re-calibration of the balance between liberty and …