Would you support a Constitutional Amendment for privacy?
If you could write it, how would it read and what would it cover?
We sort of already have one; The Fourth Amendment. I don't know what LSD the Supreme Court was on when they saw a right to privacy in the Fourteenth Amendment.
Excellent question. I don't have a minute right know to write the language I'd like to see but something that:
1. Covered private organizations maintaining files on people without their expressed and deliberate permission requiring a signature with an explanation of their agreement to forfeit their right to privacy in
BOLD PRINT as opposed to fine print or burried in pages of legalese mumbo junbo that nobody ever reads. The forfeiture of the right to privacy (likely out of ignorance IMHO) expires annually so if a person is duped into handing over their right to privacy to use something like a rewards card or whatever, they must get the person to re-up their permission to have the organization to maintain profiles on them each year expressly saying I want XYZ, inc. to violate my privacy.
2. Medical records, already statutorily private (supposedly) but since we're addressing privacy, make it constitutional.
3. If the government spies on someone, they should have a good reason to; get court permission and once the person is deemed not to be a threat, privately NOTIFY HIM of the investigation and why disclosing all information gathered explaining most concerns are thankfully false alarms but all potential threats must be thoroughly investigated and then DESTROY THE DATA COLLECTED.
4. Any invasion of an American's privacy using offshore shelters to avoid US Constitutional law makes any American involved in such schemes subject to criminal and civil liabilities, foreign nationals additionally subject to deportation and/or are banned from travel to the US.
5. I know its a big reversal in our current criminal justice culture but I think people who are suspects of crimes should be afforded privacy protection until such time as they are convicted provided they cooperate with officials and don't go into hiding where publicity is needed to apprehend them. Perpwalks and mugshots on the news injure innocent people's reputations under a system where we are supposedly innocent until proven guilty. I have a relative who could not get a job or rent an apartment because he was arrested but later the charges were dropped because potential employers and landlords have access to the arrest records and treat him like a convicted felon despite his status as innocent.
6. The sexual offender database needs to be used to protect the innocent, not shame people who pose no to threat to anyone and is used as a form of punishment. Only forcible rapists and pedophiles should be listed; not boyfriend turns 18 and girlfriend is still 17, guys can't hold it any longer and takes a leak behind a tree, college girl has too much to drink at Marti Gras and flashes the twins at the crowd, consensual acts in the back of a car at night, etc. Not that I think any of those things are okay but they aren't endangering the public there therefore should not be listed on a registry that is intended to warn the public of a real threat to our safety.
7. Identity of sexual assault victims unless efforts to locate missing people requires disclosure of the dangers they are in, etc. For the most part its already practiced but only as a courtesy and at the discretion of the media. They sometimes make exceptions.