Libertarians Raise Constitutional Right to Privacy Bill

The Libertarian Party is introducing a constitutional amendment to establish the right of privacy in the Oregon constitution. This measure has been an important project of the Libertarian leadership for many years. The bill allows government intervention only if it is in the “compelling state interest”. The idea behind the bill is to try and put up some defense against growing government surveillance and data mining of citizen personal information.

The measure has sounded the alarm with pro-family advocates who see this as a way to unintentionally codify the right to abortion and same sex marriage. The right to privacy has been a solid defense argument used by abortion rights and same-sex marriage advocates. Add in the role of terrorism-security-surveillance issues as it relates to privacy and you have a bill that has tripled in its hot button issues.

This begs the question”¦just what is privacy?