Comment by powvans
3 days ago
There are a lot of commenters responding to this that appear to be confused about the Constitution and government power in the US.
The federal government has the power to regulate the conduct of private actors and to regulate the activity between private actors. The Civil Rights Act is an obvious example.
Relevant to this discussion, obviously HIPAA regulates how certain private actors must treat the data of other private actors, aka patients.
It's probably confusing because the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, primarily restrain government power. These were enacted because people believed that the original articles granted the federal government too much power. Amendments alter the existing document. Just like the articles in the original document, an amendment can also authorize government powers.
The 13th amendment is a clear example of an amendment that authorizes government power and restrains the conduct of private citizens. It abolished slavery and gave Congress the power to enforce the prohibition.
An amendment can absolutely be written to establish a right to privacy against other private actors and authorize Congress to enact regulation to enforce that right.
And even if you prefer to view the constitution as primarily setting up restrictions on government power, I think most of us here would agree that the at-scale data collection and surveillance our government performs under the guise of national security is an incredible power that is new and novel enough to warrant a discussion on keeping it in check.
The federal government a) saves everything, b) is constantly trying to attack encryption, c) tries to insert backdoors in hardware, and d) otherwise gives itself the means to spy on citizens and aliens alike. Even though we fight and have won, it’s been pyrrhic. I’m tired of constantly having the battle every time a new generation forgets why privacy is important.
I can’t imagine ways in which an amendment asserting every citizen’s innate ownership over their digital footprint, data sovereignty, etc. could be a misuse of the constitution. “No government shall abridge access to secure and private communication technology. No government shall collect or persist a profile of any citizen except as required to serve justice. No government can compel decryption of private data. Etc…”