General Assembly Resolution #213 “Privacy Protection Act” (Category: Civil Rights; Strength: Significant) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.
The General Assembly has made robust efforts to protect critical rights ranging from
assembly to
expression. GA 213, however, falls flat in its attempt to protect its eponymous right to privacy and is riddled with enough holes to watch a burlesque show through.
This body identifies the following critical flaws:
- Clause 1 is vague arguably to the point of unenforceability, particularly when it comes to figuring out whether "a subjective expectation of privacy and a reasonable, or objective, expectation of privacy exist."
- Clause 3 waives the resolution's privacy protection "with regard to unlawful actions (or matters) and actions that occur within public view," even if such things would fall under attorney-client or physician-patient privilege.
- Section 4 "affirms the legality of the following under the law of this Assembly as not infringing on the right to privacy," most of which is absurdly broad and abusable. It's also phrased as an affirmative provision rather than an exception, thereby kneecapping stronger national efforts to protect the right to privacy.
- "Conducting or attempting to conduct a legal arrest or pursuing a criminal suspect" encompasses all manner of blatant privacy violations under the umbrella of "pursuing a criminal suspect."
- "Monitoring or conducting legal surveillance of a criminal suspect or an associate" allows for trampling privacy underfoot under the ridiculously broad specter of "monitoring" or "conducting legal surveillance." It allows repressive governments to legislate away privacy by simply making surveillance legal and exploiting the broadness of "criminal suspect" and especially "associate."
- "Requiring that a person testify about something that is private when violations of the law are suspected or during the course of a lawful trial" similarly enables rampant abuse due to its use of "suspected."
- Adding insult to injury, the target's sixth clause "[clarifies] that reasonable, or objective, expectations of privacy might vary regarding similar actions, places, or other matters in different jurisdictions because of differences in culture and so forth." Rather than belatedly patch up the first clause, this further muddies the waters.
These crippling problems aside, there's a more fundamental issue. Other explicitly protected rights scarcely make sense without an implicit right to privacy, and privacy violations are explicitly or implicitly covered under resolutions protecting those rights.
- GA 537 forbids member states from taking "punitive or discriminatory action against any individual for planning, assisting, or participating in non-violent assembly or association for the purpose of articulating or advocating any belief or ambition" and member states and private entities from taking "action to prevent or hinder the planning or holding of non-violent assembly or association for the purpose of articulating or advocating any belief or ambition," with many potential privacy violations falling under "punitive or discriminatory action" or "action to prevent or hinder."
- GA 436 protects "the ability to outwardly demonstrate, articulate, or otherwise express a political, cultural, social, moral, religious, ideological or other belief without fear of state punishment or reprisal," with many potential privacy violations falling under "state punishment or reprisal."
- A litany of other resolutions as varied as GAs 340, 534, 643, and 561 include many potential privacy violations under their protections against reprisal, interference, discouragement, coercion, punishment, or similar.
The target is not only riddled with flaws, but arguably unnecessary due to the nature of the right it aims to protect. In accordance with the Final Ride initiative, a resolution this poorly written cannot stay on the books, much less one so flimsy that calling it insubstantial would be an insult to cotton candy.
Therefore, the General Assembly repeals GA 213.
