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As I have gotten older, I have become increasingly loathe to invest time or
energy in action unless it can have lasting or binding impact. This can!
After the 1994 Democratic Congress mandated a pervasive half-billion-dollar
national wiretap system, many of us helplessly howled. After the 1996
Republican Congress enacted the Communications "Decency" Act, we howled
again.
Some government enforcers are zealously urging prohibitions against secure
personal privacy protection in the form of uncrackable cryptography.
Others oppose anonymous electronic communication and publishing, even
though everyone from corporate and government whistle-blowers to the
still-unknown authors of the Federalist Papers have found just cause to
publish anonymously. Other threats to our nation's traditional freedoms
have already been proposed, under the excuse that they involve modern
communications and information technologies.
More of the nation's press have finally even begun to show some concern.
And, responding to the vague censorship mandates of the Communications
Decency Act, Senator Patrick Leahy has proposed "anti-decency" legislation
to "fix" it.
We need more than this small "fix."
THE TIME IS NOW RIPE for us to urge him and other liberal and conservative
legislators who *do* believe in a strong Bill of Rights (even in modern
times) to introduce a bill that is much more appropriate -- for today and
tommorrow -- and one that is much more politically defensible.
With impressive foresight, it was first proposed in 1991 by Harvard Law
School's Professor Laurence Tribe, who has repeatedly been mentioned as a
possible Supreme Court nominee. For the first time in his entire career as
a internationally-renown Constitutional scholar, he proposed a
constitutional amendment:
"This Constitution's protections for the freedoms of speech, press,
petition, and assembly, and its protections against unreasonable
searches and seizures and the deprivation of life, liberty or property
without due process of law shall be construed as fully applicable
without regard to the technological method or medium through which
information content is generated, stored, altered, transmitted or
controlled."
Professor Tribe proposed that this be our 27th Amendment on 3/26/91, during
his keynote address at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom &
Privacy, in Burlingame CA. It was published in the conference's
proceedings (now out of print) and in The Humanist, Sep/Oct'91,
pp.15-20,39.
Let us -- as individuals and through our organizations, liberal and
conservative -- NOW urge our federal legislators, our congressional
candidates and our presidential candidates to *promptly* introduce and pass
this as a constitutional amendment, for which the need is becoming
increasingly clear.
Contact your Senators, Representatives and President -- and those
candidates who hope to be. Contact the leaders in your professional, civic
and political organizations that might give a damn about the Bill of Rights
... even in the 21st Century.
--jim
Jim Warren, GovAccess list-owner/editor (jwarren@well.com)
Advocate & columnist, MicroTimes, Government Technology, BoardWatch, etc.
345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; voice/415-851-7075; fax/<# upon request>
[puffery: Dvorak Lifetime Achievement Award (1995); James Madison Freedom-
of-Information Award, Soc. of Professional Journalists - Nor.Cal. (1994);
Hugh Hefner First-Amendment Award, Playboy Foundation (1994);
Pioneer Award, Electronic Frontier Foundation (its first year, 1992);
founded the Computers, Freedom & Privacy confs, InfoWorld; blah blah blah :-).]
Apologies for the spam. It *does* seem important. Please recirculate freely.
-- Bill Langham Hemaskus Information Management Rye, NY Services blangham@westnet.comThe path I follow I can hardly see. In Rain, Wendell Berry I tooted my horn for th' passing lane. Maybelline, Chuck Berry