Madinah Wilson-Anton is a Democrat serving Newark in the House of Representatives.
As we enter the 250th year since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, certain conversations between the Founders remain highly relevant to challenges we face today. When considering the appropriate balance between civil liberties and safety, Benjamin Franklin stated, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
America reinforced the importance of personal liberty, privacy and protection from government intrusion through the passage of the Fourth Amendment. The Founders placed protections against unreasonable searches in the Fourth Amendment because of their experiences with Red Coats tossing apart homes in search of patriots. Today, reverse warrants are being used as a modern, digital equivalent.
Reverse warrants use two types of data: 1.) location information transmitted by our devices, often automatically, without our intent or knowledge; and 2.) the information we enter into search engines. This creates an eerie, Big Brother situation, where the government places people under public scrutiny without any specific suspicion of wrongdoing.
When people use Uber to visit locations that are in the vicinity of Planned Parenthoods, should all their ride data be combed on the chance they might be seeking reproductive health care?
When a store is robbed, should the government be able to surveil the hundreds of nearby people whose phones ping solely because they were passing by that store?
Reverse warrants are an assault on the Fourth Amendment, as they subject large swaths of innocent people to unnecessary and intrusive surveillance without just cause.
This is not a partisan issue. Organizations like the Caesar Rodney Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union supported ending the use of this unconstitutional practice. Whether conservative, liberal or somewhere in between, excessive government surveillance impacts everyone, especially in a modern world that requires almost all of us to interact with digital devices.
I am proud to sponsor House Bill 145, which would end the use of reverse warrants in Delaware.
The decision Delaware makes regarding reverse warrants has impacts reaching both inside and outside of our state. Our state is the corporate home for the majority of the country’s largest tech and data companies, including the parent companies of Google, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, ChatGPT, Uber, Lyft and now TikTok. That means states seeking data from these companies can come to Delaware to serve reverse warrants, including for conduct that isn’t even illegal here.
The passage of HB 145 will be a return to the values our Founders enshrined in the Bill of Rights and
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
