Editor’s note: This commentary is by Steve May, who is a licensed clinical social worker working in addiction medicine for the last 15 years, treating addicts, alcoholics and their families in a variety of settings. He was a Democratic candidate for the state Senate in the Chittenden District in 2018.
[A]t the founding of the republic, one of the most thorny questions the Founding Fathers grappled with involved whether or not to create a bill of rights or to leave the constitution alone as a singular and perfect standalone document. Some of the founders argued that by adding a bill of rights, which named only some rights, those rights named would be the only ones one might think they believed were worthy of inclusion in a bill of rights. All other rights might be deemed less than worthy for inclusion in a future bill of rights or similar document.
The Bill of Rights itself was a compromise. Among the framers themselves there was heated debate over the size and scope of what was to be eventually known as the Bill of Rights. After days of colorful and sometimes charged words, the parties came together — they chose to include just 10 amendments. Some of those rights have stood up better over the course of time than others. For instance, 2019 doesn’t see a whole lot of quartering of British soldiers. On the other hand, the guarantees in the First Amendment are the envy of free people everywhere, delivering on what FDR referred to as “the Four Freedoms” of every American: freedom to worship, freedom of expression, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
The Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution do not deliver to citizens a guaranteed right to privacy. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures Only 11 states equipped their citizens with an expressed right to privacy in their state constitutions, and Vermont isn’t one of them. Privacy here is an inferred right; it exists only to the extent that we decides it’s worth seeking out space to safeguard our more essential interests.
Vermonters desperately need an expressed right to privacy. There’s lots of good reasons why, but here’s just one. VTDigger published a story recently about the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles and its cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in using facial recognition software to search for undocumented immigrants who hold Vermont driver’s licenses. The question isn’t about the handful of undocumented drivers, it’s about who’s next. And where does this stop? And whose civil rights are we willing to trade away next?
Liberty is not conditional. After all, it’s not just for the days when we feel like it. Our ancestors gave the greatest measure of devotion for that right to privacy, on battlefields at Gettysburg and San Juan Hill, and in courtrooms, securing the right to vote as we want to, pray as we want to, dance as we want to, and eat as we want to. At the end of the day, it ought to be worth more than a 20% off coupon at some chain restaurant.
Privacy is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. Vermont has seen more than its fair share of privacy breaches in the last decade. In an age where our data is like currency, seeing time and time again that our personal health information is passed from vendor to vendor like baseball cards can’t help but create reason for pause. A brief review of the attorney general’s website lists all the recent data breaches in the last month affecting Vermonters. The list is too numerous to recount here, and that is the point. Living in a Wild West reality where our most personal information is on offer to most anyone curious and enterprising enough to snoop in the right places should be terrifying.
Data is a commodity, and whether we like it or not personal information is power in 2019. Personal privacy needs to be a front burner issue going forward for the Legislature and our elected officials moving into the second half of the legislative term. Never has it been more critical that we as a society act to safeguard the privacy rights of every Vermonter. There are those among us who would trade their right to privacy for the sake of convenience, but once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. That, frankly, is no bargain, and government must step in and protect all of us from trading away our civil liberties for some trinkets or the shiniest tschakka on offer. It’s fundamental to who we are as human beings and as a human family.
This is underlined by the reality that Vermont was just one of two states that permitted facial recognition technology to be used for identification purposes by ICE. The federal government actually used the state’s database, so the state was only mostly complicit as opposed to being entirely complicit. This case provides proof that Vermont needs to take steps to provide a state constitutional amendment safeguarding privacy rights. Only by creating an expressed right to privacy will we eventually secure the right to privacy for all Vermonters.
