Senator Stewart Reid (R – Ogden, District 18) just doesn’t seem to get it as he continually chooses to stand by his yea vote on HB 477 and his nay vote on HB 1001 to repeal the draconian GRAMA (Government Records Access Management Act) law.

In yesterdays Salt Lake Tribune, Reid said 477 should have stayed in place, asking the hypothetical question “What if my wife texts and asks me at 3 o’clock to rendezvous with her?” And went on to say “Some government official gets to read that text.”

Reid and his ilk continue to labor under the false impression that GRAMA requests allow citizens and the media to have full and open access every single document transmitted over any means whatsoever.

The simple fact is that GRAMA requests need to be somewhat specific, otherwise those in government charged with fulfilling the request won’t have a place to even start. For a request to be effective, requests have to be given a frame.

And what of these so called “fishing” expeditions. The few pro-477 legislators point to one GRAMA request that took 290 hours and resulted in no newspaper article or citizen action. They claim that this is proof that people abuse the system, but they have failed to actually state what the request was for. Having poured over many documents from my own GRAMA requests, it is safe to say that sometimes you can’t find anything worth reporting – even if you really want to. It is quite possible that an individual, despite extreme tenacity, simply could not find enough evidence to make a case – that lawmakers actually did act in the best interest of the public (a novel concept, I will grant you, but possible none the less).

But let us suppose the request truly is an attempt to find embarrassing information – the so called “midnight text.” The answer to preventing people from finding these texts should come from the law-makers themselves, rather than clamping down on the citizens.

Anyone with any sense of the employee-employer relationship knows that you do not use company resources for personal matters; furthermore, you should know that if you do send an email over official channels, you have no right to expect privacy. Why do lawmakers – whom we employ, mind you – feel that they are somehow exempt from this basic rule? Personal matters should take place only through personal channels, and if you, either through ignorance or arrogance, choose to ignore this, don’t expect privacy.

But this isn’t enough, lawmakers should expect that if personal devises are used for the peoples business, those particular records should be made available as well. This does not mean that a GRAMA request can demand your entire hard drive, what it does mean is that if you respond to a constituent email from a home computer, you just did the peoples business, and we have a right to know your opinion on any particular matter. If the “personal” avenue is protected, lawmakers could simply tell special-interest leaders to email or text on a personal account or phone, pushing potential corruption to an even deeper level.

Lawmakers, naturally, are the most concerned about GRAMA laws and complain that their 4th Amendment right is at jeopardy; but, as Michael Williams, former Utah Supreme Court justice points out in the same Trib article, lawmakers give up some of their rights by choosing to be a public servant – it is simply part of the job. In essence, there ability to effect the public good outweighs their private right to some (but certainly not all) rights. Though it may be an extreme parallel, felons, due to  the decisions hey have made, give up some (but not all) of their rights as well.

Reid also wants to paint a picture that GRAMA requests will put a chilling effect on peoples desire to communicate with their legislators. This I find to be a very weak argument, if only because if a citizen is willing to write a legislator, it is probably because they are passionate about an issue and want to make sure their representative votes a certain way. Even if a person does not want their information published, a request to vote a certain way (and the reasons to do so) are far different from those that a GRAMA request would look for. I don’t care if Jon Q. Public thinks you should vote a certain way, I only care if Mr. Public says that you should vote a certain way and bribes or blackmails you to do so. There is a sort of de facto protection of the citizens right to contact lawmakers because a simple “I think you should vote this way” does not make for a very interesting story.

But lets suppose I am wrong. The evil main-stream media really is out to harass a law maker for no reason other than they just don’t like them. How do we address this legitimate concern?

Well, that is what the GRAMA work-group is hashing out right now. In my own opinion a few reasonable updates should be put into place:

1. Require that all electronic communications between legislators and registered lobbyists take place through a traceable and archived system, be it text, email, instant message, or other recordable digital communication (you will note that this would, most likely, still exclude phone calls and says nothing about face-to-face communication). These electronic communications should only be accessible to lawmakers and lobbyists,  unless a proper GRAMA request is made.
2. Create a formal Ombudsman for the citizens of Utah to act as an intermediary. A list of no less than five people should be generated and agreed upon by the Governor, the Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, the Speaker of the House and the House Minority Leader, and the President of the Senate as well as the Minority Leader. One Ombudsman should then be elected into office with a term of no more than four years and given a term limit of two terms. This Ombudsman should be independent and charged with defining what is truly private communication requests. There should also be a process to overturn the Ombudsman’s decisions.
3. Make it clear to lawmakers that ownership of an electronic device is immaterial in regards to any public communication.
4. Lawmakers should make clear, upon first communication, that their conversation could be public in nature with added rights given to individuals who are initially, and legitimately, unaware of this possibility.

Reid ends the article with the rather aggressive statement that “(t)here is no interest on the media’s part to protect privacy of legislators and their constituents.” Reid is only half right, and proves that he has no respect for the additional check and balance the fourth estate provides. You see, if the media always respected the right to privacy at a level Reid and his cronies would like, the media would no longer be doing its job. The media must probe, and it should not always play nice. To do so would mean that it is no longer serving the interest of the public, it is only by way of the open exchange of ideas – no matter how embarrassing, misguided, or downright deceitful – that our democracy is able to function. One you are operating in the public realm, you have to accept the fact that the public is able to criticize and question it.

You may recall me writing about SB 275 a month ago. In summary, the bill allows petition signers to remove their name from a petition up to one month after it has been submitted.  At the time I pointed out this law could easily be used by opponents of any particular petition to put pressure and harass targeted individuals in an attempt to make the petition fail.

Sure enough, we are now hearing of examples of such harassment. But first, a little back story.

Less than a week ago the Deseret News reported that State Republican Party chairman Dave Hansen will “probably” start a campaign to convince some GOP signees to remove their name from the Utahens for Ethical Government petition but that they “won’t harass anyone; (they’ll) ask them to consider taking their name off.”

Indeed, the next day, a federal judge (presumably seeing how such a law could be abused) issued a court order to keep the names of signers off the public record for at least ten days. This, however, does not appear to be enough.

While listening to the Nightside Project on KSL, a caller stated that they were being harassed by an individual to remove their name from the UEG petition. Now I am not accusing the Utah Republican Party of initiating the process of harassment, but who is to say if an individual member, perhaps one who works for the county clerk, acted on their own accord to harass this signer?

Of course this is all pure conjecture, but the Utah GOP certainly has the most vocal in their opposition to the peoples initiative (though some Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns as well). They are the ones who work in the majority of the clerks offices, and they are the ones who passed this law in the first place.

I am not opposed to allowing people to remove their signature, but this is proof that lawmakers are not interested in letting the process work properly. What I predicted would go wrong has, and it did not even take a week to prove it.

Never let it be said that I don’t give credit where credit is due. I applaud Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz for his bill banning full body scans as a primary means of airport security. The bill passed the House yesterday but faces tough opposition from his own party members in the Senate.

For those of you who don’t know, full body scanning technology has been implemented in a hand full of our countries airports as another level of security screening. The technology employs radio waves that pierce through clothing but are stopped by skin just like how x-rays can go through skin, but be stopped by bone. Hidden ceramic weapons (used to thwart metal detectors) are obviously more dense than skin and, therefore, pop up on the imager if present. The problem is, for the 99.9999 percent of us not trying to hijack an airplane when flying, the only image that pops up is a full scan of your naked body.

Some privacy issues have been addressed to try and mitigate this problem, such as making these scans voluntary, blurring the face of the individual, and having the person reviewing the scans in a separate room – but the point still stands: someone is looking at your naked body in the name of homeland security.

What concerns me is not so much the opposition to this bill in the name of security – indeed it is a powerful and effective tool; no, what concerns me is the utter lack of concern people have for being effectively stripped down to get on a plane. Not only do we live in a society where people are forced to give up their right to privacy, but society is happy to do so.

My generation in particular is notoriously unconcerned by these sorts of technologies.  We, as a group, are used to having our lives peered into – Facebook pages, twitter accounts, text messaging, hell, even blog writing, are all part of a generation that is used to divulging information to the world, not knowing or particularly caring who reads about you. More on to the point, we want people to know everything about us. It is only natural then that we are unphased by these sorts of technology – it is just another way to have someone know you are who you say you are, in this case you are not a terrorist.

This is where I become concerned: just because someone willingly gives up a civil liberty does not mean it is not still lost. Furthermore, if history is any guide, it is easy to lose rights, but gaining or regaining rights require long fought battles.  On top of that, let us not forget that government works in waves – one law leads to another, and another, and another.  The cliche of the slippery slope holds true.  If society allows a toe-hole (as I believe it already has through things such as the PATRIOT ACT), lawmakers get the green light to take more and more rights away from you.  Never forget that the largest mines in the world started with a single pick-axe in the side of a mountain.

It can be argued that we do not have a right to fly, therfore we have no or few grounds to complain on.  I direct you to the 13th article of the UN Universal Declaration of Human rights that states:

• Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
• Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

We have the right to move about this country and between countries freely.  You do have other options to travel, but is it any less of a violation of your rights when one option is restricted?

So, in the end, I hope that Chaffetz’s bill passes.  I am concerned about security, but I am more concerned about my rights as a human.