After reading about the quarantines of XRS-TB carriers in Africa, I wanted to find out more about the quarantine laws in the US. This recent article stated that the meat of our quarantine laws has not changed from the 19th century, when quarantines were much more common because of the prevalence of some dangerous infectious diseases and because of the lack of medicine to treat some diseases.
Now the controversy is over whether our government should be allowed to gain more access to flight information in order to potentially inform people if they have been infected with something. Though the ACLU has some problems with the government having access to this information and the airline companies are worried that the increased bookkeeping will drastically increase their functioning costs, I think that the government has a right to demand these records in an effort to protect it's people.
Even though it is never the best idea for a government to have all the information on all of its citizens, in this case the government would only be able to access the information if the crisis arose. It's a win-win situation: if they need to know who was on a flight and this information would help more people, they could get it, but otherwise no one's privacy is invaded. The problems will arise in enforcing the restriction of access to flight information, but I feel that airlines will have an economic incentive to protect their passengers' privacy. I think that if the enforcement is in the airlines' hands it will go much smoother than if it is in the government's hands.
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