Communications

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” –Thomas Jefferson

Conservatives get off track on issues like privacy when they lose sight of the fact that government’s first priority is NOT to protect Americans’ security, but is rather to protect Americans’ freedom. If you assume that government’s first job is to protect national security, you are already on the thinnest end of the wedge that eventually leads to a surveillance state, which is simply the last bus stop just before a police state. Our system, including the justice system, by design correctly values freedom over security anytime the two come into conflict, which as it turns out is pretty often.

So public horror at the disclosure of widespread data collection on the activities of ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency is entirely warranted. People realize that, while there is always going to be a tension between security and privacy, discovering that the federal government is building massive databases of our phone communication, Internet activity, credit card transactions and God knows what else suggests that the government has crossed the line and is prioritizing security over freedom.

There has been a huge problem over the past few years with municipalities dragging their feet on approving permits to allow cell phone towers to be constructed, or even to allow new transmitters to be added to existing towers or to buildings.

Municipalities have been doing this on purpose, largely at the urging of consultants, who suggest the delays at least in part as a way to extract concessions from the wireless companies. It’s been a big problem, with municipalities complaining to the wireless companies about poor service coverage and then at the same time unnecessarily delaying permits to address the problem.

IPI has written about this problem several times, and one of the solutions we suggested was that municipalities should be put on a shot clock and given only a limited amount of time that they could delay such applications.

Which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did.

Upon which action the City of Arlington, Texas, which is just about 30 miles from where I sit, challenged the regulation, claiming that the FCC didn’t have the authority to regulate how they approved applications for cellphone towers.