Lines and Flows: The Beginning and End of Borders: Addendum I

The article, Lines and Flows: The Beginning and End of Borders, posits in the contemporary security/trade context, that the logic of information sharing is irrefutable. It is now conceivable, indeed eminently executable, for a nation to check the identity of each passenger flying on every airplane, for example, toward its physical borders against “watch” lists of persons believed to pose a disproportionate security risk. Even though the receiving authority by definition would retain unfettered discretion to act on the information vel non, the record here, with a handful of exceptions, is that nations ostrich-like refuse regularly to avail themselves of access to this information. They do so in deliberate deference to other values which are deemed to be competing and of greater importance. Accordingly, these values are assigned a higher priority as matters of policy and practice. The Right to Privacy, construed in one form or another, is the principal counter value interposed to the operational logic of information sharing for security purposes.