Charlton Heston’s legacy will surely rest on his iconic performance as Moses in The Ten Commandments and his unwavering support of the Second Amendment. I had the privilege of watching a classic Heston performance at the 2000 National Rifle Association convention in Charlotte, N.C., when he raised a handmade Brooks flintlock above his head and warned then-presidential candidate Al Gore that he could remove it only “from my cold, dead hands.”
Focusing only on these two images misses the real measure of the man. Heston walked a picket line in front of a whites-only restaurant in 1961 in Oklahoma City to repeal “Jim Crow” discriminatory laws; he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Washington in 1963 to promote civil rights; and he served as a gunner on bombers during WWII. No one can deny that Heston was a man of strong principles who used his star power to focus the public’s attention on issues he considered vital to the nation.
What about the Fourth Amendment?
Issues involving individual rights are still in the news, but many now concern technology’s impact on personal privacy. The most recent flap was over Google’s addition of 360-degree views to its online street maps, because some photos show in great detail property clearly marked private.
Privacy rights will also have to be considered by government programs designed to curb peak power consumption. For example, the advent of smart transmission and distribution grids (p. 42) does more than confirm that utilities are interested in adopting new technology. It also raises questions about how far beyond the home meter regulators should reach in the name of energy efficiency.
Advanced “smart” meters and computer-controlled appliances have the potential to better match demand to supply without human interaction (see p. 64). The key question is this: Whose finger should be adjusting the thermostat? Some state regulators began with what Contributing Editor Ken Maize calls the “nanny-state approach to energy conservation: the utility knows best.” In my opinion, this license is a fundamental intrusion into our personal privacy rights that should be resisted. To paraphrase Heston, “You’ll have to pry my toasty warm fingers from my thermostat this winter.”
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