The privacy risk is that these codes may be later used for other law enforcement efforts outside counterfeiting, or to identify people who try to participate in political debates anonymously.

The problem with privacy cases is that most privacy plaintiffs have to give up their privacy. In order to sue you have to show up in court and show that they used your phone records.

What often is missed with social irritants like spam and telemarketing is that they are a product of privacy violations, ... You can try to marginalize spam, but it is inextricably linked to fraudulent practices. Addressing spam will get at the other issues that they claim to be important.

The fact is that over the last 10 or 20 years our privacy has been at risk by the vast amounts of data that society is putting in third-party hands. That's how modern society has been architected.

This year we will intensify our law enforcement efforts in this field. We will require law enforcement officials to step up the frequency of fines.

The public has a right to know what kind of monitoring the government is doing, and there should be a public discussion of the appropriate trade-offs between law enforcement and privacy rights.