Category: Rights

Intrusive snoop apps on the phone? Not if Ich Bin can help it.

Survey Finds Americans Skeptical of Contact Tracing Apps.

Confusion and skepticism may confound efforts to make use of digital contact tracing technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent survey found that just 42 percent of American respondents support using so-called contact tracing apps—an indication of a lack of confidence that could weaken or even derail effective deployment of such technologies.

Most contact tracing apps generally try to collect some form of information about a smartphone user’s encounters with other people and notify those users if they were potentially exposed to a confirmed COVID-19 case. But each app has its own approach to privacy and can differ in whether it collects more specific location data based on GPS or merely records close encounters with other smartphones based on Bluetooth radio-wave transmissions. Those differences, coupled with public misunderstanding of different apps, can make it tricky to assess public opinion of specific digital contact tracing technologies.

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The Shutdown Is The Largest Infringement Of Rights In A Century
Right now all of us have decisions to make about how much freedom is too much freedom.

On the national lockdown loosening in some states and stubbornly persisting in others, Americans are very much of two minds. For some, including most of the media, it is an inconvenience, but a righteous one that saves lives. For others, often with smaller megaphones, it is a powerfully destructive force economically and socially. But we should be able to agree that, whether justified or not, the lockdown has been a massive infringement on Americans’ basic rights.

At least since women received the right to vote there has been no time when so many Americans have had so many basic rights limited by the government. Yes, millions have been drafted, during World War II the entire country was made to ration goods, and there have been horrible incidents like Japanese internment. But never have the vast majority of Americans — hundreds of millions of people — had so many rights stripped for so extended a time with no end in sight.

Let’s look down the list of rights that are currently being denied by the state to the vast majority of Americans. Most may not leave their houses except for essential travel. Most may not operate their businesses. Most may not attend church or host even small gatherings in their homes. Most may not receive even potentially life-saving medical procedures such as cancer screenings. Whether one supports or opposes the lockdown, this deprivation of rights in unprecedented in modern American history.

America was founded on the principle that God gives us inalienable rights, specifically to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. State-imposed shutdowns of basic medical services threaten life. Restrictions on travel and what we may do in our homes threaten liberty. Banning all gatherings such as church, entertainment, social gatherings, and sports threatens happiness. The lockdown hits the trifecta.

Those in favor of the state-mandated restriction of rights argue that it is only temporary and is needed because of the grave medical emergency we face. Even though many, including Attorney General William Barr, have expressed serious doubts as to whether a pandemic supersedes the Constitution, let’s stipulate for the sake of argument that it does and see where this idea takes us.

The first thing to note is that this unprecedented attack on basic rights is open ended. Many believe that at least some of these restrictions must stay in place until the Chinese virus is no longer with us. This may never happen. Will “the new normal” be one in which we sacrifice freedom for safety? And if so, what is the limiting principle?

For that matter, what constitutes a public health crisis sufficiently deadly to “temporarily” suspend people’s rights? In 2017, about 40,000 people were killed in incidents involving guns. To date, about 70,000 people have died from coronavirus. These figures are not wildly different. If the state may take such drastic measures to deny Americans rights during the pandemic, why couldn’t tens of thousands of gun-related deaths qualify as a public health crisis that supersedes the Second Amendment and leads to gun confiscation? Where is the line between these causes of death?

What about free speech? Surely nobody would suggest that this most basic and precious liberty be a casualty of the Chinese pandemic — or would they? In The Atlantic, Jack Goldsmith and Adam Keane Woods have this to say” “In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the [Internet] network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong. Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing Internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the Internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values.” Yikes!

The longer this lockdown goes on, the more accustomed Americans become to a deprivation of their God-given rights by the state in the name of saving lives, and the flimsier the parchment of the Constitution becomes. Governments always have “good reasons” for denying rights. Nobody ever says, “I just want to be an awful fascist.” There’s always a threat, usually a very serious one, that supposedly justifies such illiberal actions.

Beyond the death, sickness, economic ruin, and inconvenience of this crisis, we must also be jealously guarding the rights protected by our founding. We do this not merely to defend the liberties that have been bequeathed to us, but protect them for those to whom we must pass them.

These are not esoteric, ivory tower constitutional questions; they literally strike at the birthright of every American. They must not be waived away under the pretense of an emergency situation. The government does not grant us rights, it protects them. Right now, all of us have decisions to make about how much freedom is too much freedom. On this question, we must never err on the side of caution, but always on the side of liberty.

“Democrat governors are demonstrating every single day that what happened in Venezuela could happen here. “For the common good we are taking away your civil rights but trust us, you’ll get them back some day.””

Louisiana pastor breaks house arrest to hold Sunday service amid coronavirus stay-at-home orders

The embattled Louisiana pastor who repeatedly flouted social distancing measures defied house arrest by hosting a large gathering of congregants for a Sunday service in defiance of orders to stay at home to limit the impact of the coronavirus.

Pastor Tony Spell of the Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge was seen on a live stream Sunday walking among more than 100 congregants, often repeating the phrase, “I’ve just got to get to Jesus. … Come on America, let’s get back to Jesus.”

Nearly all parishioners were not wearing face masks, and social distancing was not being practiced, The Associated Press reported.

Spell had been placed on house arrest at 9 a.m. Saturday morning after refusing to tell a judge if he’d continue to hold Sunday services.

A Facebook Live video shared by Central City News showed the pastor playing the piano surrounded by family members inside his home. A man wearing personal protective equipment had Spell sign paperwork before fitting him for an ankle monitor.

“Tomorrow at 12 o’clock, my voice will be silenced for several months,” he said, referring to his normal Sunday service. “You will not hear from me again. I promise you, I will continue to do what I do. This is not about me. This is about our religious liberties.”

Spell, who has also been accused of nearly running over a protester with his church bus, appeared before a state district judge Friday but refused to clarify whether he would continue to hold in-person religious services over the weekend in defiance of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ stay-at-home order, The Advocate reported.

Judge Fred Crifasi of the 19th Judicial District Court asked Spell if he would comply with the order that’s required all non-essential businesses, including churches, to shut their doors, and has limited gathering to no more than 10 people.

Citing Bible verse 1 Peter 3:14, Spell responded: “But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled,” according to District Attorney Hillar Moore III.

When Crifasi asked a second time, Spell remained silent, something the judge interpreted to mean the pastor would once again fail to adhere to social-distancing measures.

Conservative group has enough, sues New Jersey school over ‘unconstitutional’ policies.

A New Jersey university has been named in a lawsuit targeting an “unconstitutional” speech policy.

The Young Americans for Liberty chapter at Montclair State University, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, filed the suit Wednesday after a demonstration on campus was allegedly shut down by campus police in September, according to a  press release from the ADF. .

“it allows the university to deny or delay a student’s request for permission for any reason.” Tweet This
The lawsuit states that “the university’s unconstitutional policies restrict and suppress student speech.”

In the suit and the press release, the group documented an incident from September 10, in which three students demonstrating against gun-free zones were allegedly stopped by a campus police officer for not having the proper permission to speak.

The policy, called the Demonstrations and Assemblies Policy, stated that anyone, especially groups or organizations, should give two weeks of advance notice to the dean of students with their “planned objective” of the event. The dean would then review the application and either approve or reject the application or, the suit alleges, modify the demonstration of “any reason …. within any set timeframe.”

“The students, affiliated with Young Americans for Liberty,” the press release stated, “are challenging the two-week requirement because it unconstitutionally suppresses all speech and because it allows the university to deny or delay a student’s request for permission for any reason.”

The suit also alleges that the Office of the Dean “has the power to selectively enforce the Speech Permit Policy based upon the content and viewpoint of students’ speech,” and called the policy an “unconstitutional prior restraint.”

In addition to the speech policy, the suit also targeted the Student Government Association, in which the suit alleges that the use of a “class system” would prevent certain groups, such as YAL from accessing funds based on their viewpoints.

“The University’s student organization regulations authorize the SGA to reward favored groups with a high ‘class’ status,” the suit continued, “while disfavoring groups like YAL with a low status which excludes them from many of the benefits enjoyed by other student organizations.”

The suit details the ranked class system as split up into four class systems, in which Class IV organizations could not request any money from SGA, while Class I organizations could receive upward of $5,000 for their yearly budget funded by student fees.

The suit also warned that the SGA had “no objective guidelines” regarding the classification of organizations or whether or not they receive funds from SGA, meaning that the club’s viewpoints could be grounds for a club’s disqualification from receiving funds.

A third area the suit covered was targeted at the university’s “Bias Education Response Taskforce.”

The suit also stated that the BERT policy would be “preventing plaintiffs from engaging in other core political speech” because of the lack of definition for “harassment, intimidation or bullying” and the college to issue any discipline “from probation to expulsion.”