> Governments need information to create containment strategies and know where to focus resources. At the same time, governments have a way of holding onto tools that undermine citizens’ privacy long after the moment of crisis has passed.
I wonder if it’s worth governments’ time trying to come up with automatically expiring bills for “emergency” uses such as these.
> I wonder if it’s worth governments’ time trying to come up with automatically expiring bills for “emergency” uses such as these.
The Patriot Act has a sunset clause, but has been repeatedly extended, which no obvious sign of it ever not being extended.
The ability to change laws makes it easier for government's to sell these sorts of changes to their constituents ("it's only temporary") whilst knowing that it probably won't turn out to actually be temporary, because they can change something that is temporary into effectively permanent.
That can be fixed by making sunset clauses automatically require a few things:
1. Must be voted on alone. That is, no sneaking it into another bill, or into the budget votes.
2. Each renewal requires a higher percentage of yes votes than the last time until 100% is required. To my recollection, there's never been a time when the Patriot Act received 100% approval.
On its face, this sounds great. However, there is nothing to prevent a later amendment then removing one of these requirements, as unreasonable or outdated because of the new way the law is being used.
To law makers, nothing about a law is immutable. Which is the crux of the problem, really. You can't prevent bad actors from messing things up unless you don't do it in the first place.
There are benefits, clear and strong, for several of these laws when they are first prepared. It's the fact you can't rely on anyone down the track not to abuse it that's the problem.
Sunset clauses aren't reliable mechanisms (patriot act). Beyond special interests, I wouldn't blame legislators if they were a little afraid to deny an intelligence service some of their toys if they've gotten comfortable using them.
I don't know how often sunset clauses are used in (US) federal legislation, but I do recall that the original "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994[1] had, and eventually utilized, a sunset clause. The law did, in fact, expire in its entirety in 2004.
But that is up to the people to pressure for change. As long as most fear the ever dreadful terrorist and as long as the ever going war on terror creates new terrorist, there is an everlasting accepted need for the patriot act.
And here with the new surveilance against corona, we will probably find out, that to fight new more dangerous deseases and of course terrorism, crime and pedophiles, we cannot really give up on these tools. There is no alternative, like my chancellor merkel says with everything. And when enough people believe it, it is true.
"Majority of people wanting something does not mean it can pass at all."
Depends. It does not matter for example, if the majority wants to have nice weather, no.
But if the majority would insists on mandatory privacy, for example, then yes, it would pass.
But they do not. Most give up privacy voluntarily for all their "free" apps and services.
In contemporary America, there are host of issues where polls consistently shows majority wants x, but it does not matter in actual politics. Two parties mean that average person opinion on this or that issue does not matter all that much.
Same if other countries I am sure, but America is the topic.
That's a good thing, but lingering emergency laws are not the full extent of the risk.
The risk is largely related to changing perceptions and standards for what is normal, beyond the pales & such. Once something has been done widely and publicly, it becomes more normal and less scary.
> Emergency measures being valid for the duration of the emergency would be pretty straightforward.
Deciding when the emergency is over is less straightforward than a fixed time period. A government that wanted to extend the measures indefinitely would just claim there's still an emergency.
But the cooperation of legislators is required because of the fixed deadlines. If the government would be allowed the right to extend the provisions on their own, they probably would try to do that in perpetuity. With a legislative branch that actually cares about civil rights, the former is the much better option.
Not straightforward - somebody would have to decide when the emergency is over, which then becomes a political question.
And even if the emergency is not over in a year, it makes a lot of sense to reconsider if the measures (which were decided very quickly) are actually appropriate and necessary going forward. Hopefully a lot have been learned in a year.
You are forgetting to factor in complacency. When is the second wave? when should we stop waiting for it? that just depends on how useful the law is for those in power.
That's quite a long time - the state of emergency here in Cze Republic can be only 30 days, after which the parliament needs to confirm any extension. Which it already did & for less than the extra month originally requested by the government.
I would also assume that the GDPR would impose severe restrictions as to the allowed duration of data collection for contact tracing purposes (in the sense that it shouldn't be legal anymore once Coronavirus ceases to be a major threat), but IANAL, so I could be wrong.
In Canada, the Government tried to pass broad emergencies measures giving it essentially unlimited power without parliament oversight... until December 2022.
I wonder if it’s worth governments’ time trying to come up with automatically expiring bills for “emergency” uses such as these.