Dear Fellow Libertarian,
The Libertarian Party of Florida State Convention will be held
from the 24th through the 26th of May this year at the Hilton Hotel in Naples,
Florida hosted by the Collier County LP.
http://www.collierlp.com/convention.html If you
would like to be a delegate, be sure to be registered as a Libertarian with your
local County Supervisor of Elections no later than the 23 March, and send me a
message. I will get you set up.
At that convention I will propose the following as an addition
to the LPF Platform, subject to the vote of the assembled
delegates.
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PRIVACY
“Just as it is true that the only economic situation
consistent with individual rights is the free market, so is it also true that
life, liberty and happiness cannot prosper under continuous state surveillance.
The LPF opposes the use by the state of people or technology to monitor, account
for, and keep Floridians under surveillance, especially where there is no
evidence of criminal behavior, and thereby restrict the normal interaction of
peoples. The LPF also opposes passive, yet compulsory, surveillance legislation,
such as laws that require reporting legal activities without evidence of
criminal acts. The first, second, fourth, fifth, ninth, tenth and fourteenth
amendments to the Constitution are all threatened by unfettered state
surveillance. The LPF further supports an amendment to the Constitution of the
United States to protect the right of privacy of all citizens, to affirmatively
defend individuals from state intrusion, to limit state intervention in private
lives, and allow the free exercise of liberty away from the overbearing powers
of government."
Our founding fathers established the Bill of Rights because they knew
that if certain rights were not codified, the march of time and the nature of
government would lead to certain natural rights being legislated out of
existence. Privacy is a well know implied, but not codified, right in the
Constitution, and it has come under unrelenting assault from both our
legislatures and the ability of technology to see things that could never be
seen before. Privacy was an issue for the Founding Fathers as it is for us, but
it is certain they could not conceive of a situation where all the
populace could be kept under surveillance all the time. Technology and an undisciplined view of the
Constitution has brought us to the point we are now, and it is past time to set
things right for individual liberty.
