For the first time in his professional career, Constitutional Scholar Laurence Tribe – previously on various short-lists of potential Supreme Court nominees – proposed a Constitutional Amendment.

He felt it was necessary in order to assure that traditional 18th Century constitutional civil liberties would remain protected against modern technological threats.

On March 26, 1991, Professor Tribe (now a Obama administration advisor), in his keynote address at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy (Burlingame, California), proposed the following to be the 27th 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.”

He proposal and its rationale was later published in The Humanist, Sep/Oct 1991, pp.15-20,39

I just submitted a proposal urging that this finally be implemented – at least by statute and regulation if not by Constitutional Amendment – via the Obama administration’s http://change.gov/page/s/techagenda .

If enough people advocate the same and pass the word to all their friends, perhaps someone in the new administration might actually give it serious consideration.

–jim; Jim Warren; jwarren@well.com
founder & Chair, First Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy
Hansville WA ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Warren

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