Tribe recommends that policy makers look not at what technology makes possible, but at the core values the Constitution enshrines. The overarching principles of that document, he maintains, are its protection of people rather than places, and its regulation of the actions of the government, not of private individuals … To ensure that these values prevail as technology changes, Tribe proposes adding a 27th amendment to the Constitution to read: ‘This Constitution’s protections for the freedoms of speech, press, petition and assembly, and its protections against unreasonable searches and seizures and the deprivation of life, liberty or property without due process of law, shall be construed as fully applicable without regard to the technological method or medium through which information content is generated, stored, altered, transmitted or controlled.
Predictor: Tribe, Laurence H.
Prediction, in context:In a 1992 paper about the Internet that is posted on the Electronic Frontier Foundation Internet site, Nan Levinson quotes constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. Levinson writes: ”In March 1991, CPSR [Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility] held the First Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy in Burlingame, California. The concerns addressed at the conference fell into three broad civil liberty categories: protecting speech, protecting privacy, and gaining access to government information. In an opening address, constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe posed a question of his own: ‘When the lines along which our Constitution is drawn warp or vanish, what happens to the Constitution itself?’ … Tribe recommends that policy makers look not at what technology makes possible, but at the core values the Constitution enshrines. The overarching principles of that document, he maintains, are its protection of people rather than places, and its regulation of the actions of the government, not of private individuals. Other central values Tribe notes are the ban on governmental control of the content of speech; the principle that a person’s body and property belong to that person and not the public; and the invariability of constitutional principles despite accidents of technology. To ensure that these values prevail as technology changes, Tribe proposes adding a 27th amendment to the Constitution to read: ‘This Constitution’s protections for the freedoms of speech, press, petition and assembly, and its protections against unreasonable searches and seizures and the deprivation of life, liberty or property without due process of law, shall be construed as fully applicable without regard to the technological method or medium through which information content is generated, stored, altered, transmitted or controlled.'”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1992
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Jurisdiction/Control
Name of publication: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Title, headline, chapter name: Electrifying Speech: New Communications Technologies and Traditional Civil Liberties
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.eff.org/Legal/electrifying_speech.paper
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney