Politics, Love, and Death in a World of No Privacy

A rticle 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. In the US, the First Amendment to the Constitution similarly protects freedom of association: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The US Supreme Court has strongly protected this right. In the 1950s, the state of Alabama required organizations doing business in the state to give the state their membership lists. The phrase “doing business” was broad enough to include nonprofits involved in political activity. In the mid-1950s, if the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had handed over its membership lists, the organization would have put members’ lives at risk.1,2 In 1964, in the case of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled that information on with whom you associate is private.3,4 Basing its decision on “the right of the people peaceably to assemble,” the court ruled that the NAACP need not release its membership list to the state of Alabama. Privacy by association was a right with teeth. But is the guarantee of association privacy still real in the US—or anywhere else?