Bluestem has been busy investigating tips from sources, but hope our readers will contact their state senators and representatives to ask for support of SF32 and its companion bill in the House HF327.
The bills if passed would put a question on the 2016 ballot asking voters to give a thumbs up or down to a constitutional amendment that would extend existing protections against unreasonable search and seizure of our persons and property to electronic data.
This seems like a no-brainer to us, an updating of a general principle in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution to a realm created by modern technology. The Fourth Amendment is a good thing:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
On the Political Animal blog at the Pioneer Press, David Montgomery reported in Data privacy amendment forges odd coalitions :
Pick another issue — maybe any other issue — and they’d be at each other’s throats.
But on Monday, the Minnesota Tea Party Alliance shared a stage with Occupy Minnesota, with the American Civil Liberties Union and an anti-Affordable Care Act advocacy group, with liberal DFLers and conservative Republicans. These unnatural allies agreed on one thing: limiting the ability of government to access electronic data.
“There won’t be many opportunities for you to see a group this ideologically diverse and bipartisan,” said Sen. Branden Petersen, R-Andover.
Petersen, a Republican with libertarian leanings, wants to amend Minnesota’s constitution to extend the existing protection against unreasonable search and seizure to electronic data. It’s an issue that cuts across the usual partisan battle lines, but even this odd coalition faces an uphill battle to bring their “data privacy” amendment to a popular vote next year.
Bluestem isn't so much interesting in hanging with the coalition as simply hanging on to a very basic right as a citizen.
Cartoon: Who needs warrantless creepers?
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