Several More amendments to chew on (I promise this is the last one for a while). I repeat my earlier comment, none of this is definitive. Rather, these are the starting points for discussion. We need to fix a few points, and to fix them we first need to discuss them. The words below are my attempt to stimulate a discussion.

On Term Limits: Simply, no one is supposed to make a career out of elected office.

A Proposal: Limits to time in elected Federal Office.

Service in both Houses of Congress shall be limited to a cumulative period of time not to exceed 20 years, day for day.
This amendment will go into force effective at the next Congressional election following ratification. Those serving in Congress when this amendment passes are exempt from the provisions of this amendment.

This would appear to be painfully obvious, but it is necessary to restate that elected office is not, and should never be, a career.

Further, Congress should make every effort to ensure that legislation is passed that has a similar effect to those who gravitate to senior offices in the federal government and remain there, moving from one office to another, some sort of peripatetic Mandarins, wandering from one office to another seemingly with no obvious connection except that they are senior members of the federal bureaucracy; America does not need and does not want a Mandarin class.

That someone can be of value to the State Department or the Department of Energy for 25 or 30 years is obvious. But that someone can wander from Energy to Health to Treasury to Defense and back again over the same 25 or 30 years suggests an expertise only in the processes of government, and the demonstrated history of government inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the last 35 years suggests we the people derive zero benefit from these Mandarins.

Secure Data, the 4th amendment is amended as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, their personal information, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Further, no individual, corporation, government office – federal, state or local, non-profit, educational institute or any other entity, public or private, may retain personal data of any type, in any form, stored on any medium, on a US Citizen for more than 5 years without the express approval of the individual concerned. Entities found to be so withholding will be in violation of this amendment and the individuals therein responsible will be held criminally liable. The FISA and any and all intelligence surveillance laws now extent and in the future will comply with this amendment in every detail.
Corporations or individuals registered outside the US, wishing to do business within the US or with US entities, will comply with the spirit and letter of this amendment. Data stored in a cloud environment outside the US must comply with this amendment.
No government agency shall have the authority to collect and hold pattern of life data on any US citizen, except that the citizen is to be employed by a government agency. Upon termination of employment the government agency must destroy that information within 5 years.
All US government data bases will be purged per para 1 within 3 years of the passing of this amendment and all USG data bases are subject to annual inspection.
Data on convicted felons may be retained for 5 years following the completion of their full sentence.
Restrictions on retention of data by US corporations or government entities does not apply to non-US citizens.

We are in the information age. The collection of data on each and every one of us is continual and pervasive. We have all lost nearly all of our privacy and we seem to have no recourse to get it back. Tremendous amounts of data have been compiled on each of us and, while it was compiled primarily to be used to get us to buy things (patterns of life “weaponized” to improve advertising) this data is, in fact readily available to overzealous police, and others in government, who really have no justification to access any of it, as we are all innocent until proven guilty, and we are all above suspicion until a crime is committed. Amassing information on innocent civilians “in case they commit a crime” is hardly the action of a government of free citizens.

Further, for purposes of credit ratings, citizens could sign letters for banks and certain other companies where access and retention would be granted, but not to others.

For many of us, those who have lived in the digital age for 20 or more years, our data is going to be nearly impossible to control – though we should try. But for the young, if we start now, in a generation or two people will grow up and they will control their own information, and not be manipulated by others through it.

There is a great deal to consider when we look at all the data that is collected about us. And what are the right time limits for holding data certainly needs debate. But let’s debate.

Finally, to reiterate, my point in all this is not to assert that I have the final answer; that’s the beauty of participatory government, there is no final answer, and you never get a perfect answer, either. But we can change things. It’s slow and cumbersome and it should be; we don’t want change to be whimsical. But we can change things. There are problems, but we can fix them. Let’s start talking about it.

We the People are the real power, let’s exercise it.

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