Government Intrusion Research Articles

Fair share of network costs and regulatory myopia: learning from net neutrality mistakes

ABSTRACT To boost the roll-out of the next generation telecommunications infrastructure, EU policy makers have advanced a proposal mandating some large online platforms to compensate network operators with a usage fee. Framed as a matter of large market players paying their fair share of contribution to telecommunications networks, the proposal would represent another unnecessary and harmful regulatory intervention. Indeed, the paper aims to demonstrate that the fair share debate is the poison fruit of a previous intrusive government initiative, that is, the net neutrality regulation. Furthermore, like net neutrality anti-discrimination rules, a fair share Big Tech tax would be a solution that wouldn’t work for a problem that doesn’t exist. Instead of continuing to interfere in market dynamics and private negotiations without any solid evidence of market failures, the EU should learn from past mistakes and acknowledge the limited scope for regulation in these dynamic markets.

Under the law: A case for social and emotional learning

Social-emotional learning (SEL) has been a staple in U.S. schools for decades, but it’s recently drawn criticism from policy makers and advocates who believe these programs represent government intrusion into areas best reserved for families. Robert Kim describes some of the legal arguments that support the use of SEL in schools. SEL programs can help foster equitable and nondiscriminatory environments, promote independence of students with disabilities, and help students learn to recognize and report instances of abuse. Both courts and the federal government have used the presence or lack of SEL programs as an indicator of whether schools are fulfilling their obligations to protect students’ rights. For this reason, SEL programs can help schools avoid legal liability, even as they help students grow in important ways

"It's None of Their Damn Business": Privacy and Disclosure Control in the U.S. Census, 1790-2020.

The U.S. Census has grappled with public concerns about privacy since the first enumeration in 1790. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, census officials began responding to concerns about privacy with promises of confidentiality. In recent years, escalating concerns about confidentiality have threatened to reduce the usability of publicly accessible population data. This paper traces the history of privacy and disclosure control since 1790. We argue that controlling public access to census information has never been an effective response to public concerns about government intrusion. We conclude that the Census Bureau should weigh the costs of curtailing access to reliable data against realistic measures of the benefit of new approaches to disclosure control.

Are Perceptions About Government and Social Media Providers Related to Protection Motivation Online?

This study aims to explore the relations between perceptions about government and social media providers, and protection motivation of social media users. A survey was conducted among students at a public university in Slovenia (N=276). The results of PLS-SEM analysis indicate that fear of government intrusions is associated with both perceived threat and privacy concern. This establishes the perceptions about government as important factors related to both privacy concern and threat appraisal according to protection motivation literature. Non-significant relations between trust in internet service provider, and perceived threat and privacy concern indicate that social media users may not consider them as relevant cyberspace actors capable of threatening their privacy on social media. The results also suggest that trust in social media providers moderates the association between privacy concern and protection motivation. Privacy concern appears to be related to protection motivation only if trust in social media provider is high.

Priming COVID-19's consequences can increase support for investments in public health

Can messaging that emphasizes the costs of COVID-19 increase popular support for more proactive public health policies? People who experience disasters often become more supportive of policies to address their underlying causes, and the pandemic may have similar spillover effects for public opinion. To test this idea, the study implements a survey experiment in Italy, Germany, and the United States in which half of the respondents were randomly assigned to a prime about the impact of the pandemic prior to answering questions about their support for public health policies. The results show that respondents who received the prime became more favorable toward increased government spending on domestic and foreign public health programs alike. These treatment effects were consistent across countries, across two different surveys in the United States conducted at different points in time, and across partisan subgroups. However, the treatment did not consistently increase support for more active and intrusive government policies to address specific public health challenges like smoking or HIV/AIDS. The results suggest that public health advocates may benefit from messaging that connects COVID-19 to the need for public health funding beyond the context of the pandemic.

Competitive Incentives of Economic Freedom for Bordering States: The Case of Tennessee vs. Kentucky

Increasing the reach of government into everyday economic interactions, whether through the government as a consumer/producer or as a taker of taxes, is not likely to create an environment in which economic activity will flourish. Improving economic growth requires that individuals and firms make decisions that allow them to combine labor, capital, and technology to produce goods and services. This means that increased government intrusion into the market, onerous regulations, and lack of competition in labor markets all can hinder economic growth. The questions addressed in this case study are: By comparing Tennessee’s record in promoting economic freedom to Kentucky, the authors research the divergent economic directions. Furthermore, what is it that Tennessee is doing to stay at the top and Kentucky at the bottom of the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of North America index and the Cato Institute’s “Freedom in the 50 States” index?

The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Thought, ed. Frans De Bruyn

<i>The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Thought</i>, ed. Frans De Bruyn

(Un)masking Seoul

Abstract In March 2019, South Korea instituted a mask mandate as the main protective measure against the spread of Covid-19. The mask and the government-issued posters detailing guidance and regulations regarding masking have since become a prominent part of Korea’s semiotic landscape. This study focuses on the capital city of Seoul to explore how these changes in the semiotic landscape have resulted in a (re)negotiation of control over space between the government and the citizens, through the lens of the mask as a static and dynamic semiotic device. The data is drawn from photographs, observations, and notes made during 3 months of commuting in central Seoul. The findings are interpreted in the light of local sociocultural ideologies, and in reference to the greater global discourse of both governmental intrusion into and regulation of spaces and behaviors through the act of mask-wearing.

Wielding the Sword of the Spirit. Volume One: The Doctrine &amp; Practice of Church Fellowship in the Missouri Synod (1838–1867) by Peter M. Prange

Reviewed by: Wielding the Sword of the Spirit. Volume One: The Doctrine & Practice of Church Fellowship in the Missouri Synod (1838–1867) by Peter M. Prange Mark Mattes Wielding the Sword of the Spirit. Volume One: The Doctrine & Practice of Church Fellowship in the Missouri Synod (1838–1867). By Peter M. Prange. Wauwatosa, Wisconsin: Joh. Ph. Koehler Press, 2021. 425 pp. Numerous books and articles have examined the early history of the Missouri Synod in relation to the Buffalo, Iowa, and Norwegian Synods. The strength of this book is the thoroughness and judiciousness of its assessment of C.F.W. Walther and his interlocutors, as well as its tendency to draw out explicitly the pastoral dimension in Walther's reasoning about church fellowship. If you are at all interested in the relationships between upper Midwest Lutheran immigrant synods in the nineteenth century, this is a satisfying book. It appreciates Walther without denigrating those with whom he disagreed. "Wielding the Sword of the Spirit" is a metaphor for discerning the conditions in which to say no to unionistic tendencies. The Prussian Union, which sought to unite the Lutheran and Reformed traditions in the kingdom of Prussia in the early nineteenth century, was opposed by Pastor Martin Stephan, J. J. Grabau, and others. Prange, a Wisconsin Synod pastor, begins his narrative with a description of the Stephanite movement, centered around Martin Stephan's ministry in Dresden; he opposed government intrusion into confessional matters, and saw those clergy who aligned with the Union church as invalidly administering sacraments. Emigrating with hundreds of parishioners and sympathizers, including Walther, Stephan was discredited soon after arriving in Missouri for alleged sexual improprieties and administrative heavy-handedness. In response to the exposure of Stephan, Walther resigned his pastoral call since he had been a devoted disciple of Stephan, now viewed as a false prophet. Even so, his congregation declined to suspend him (44). In response to Stephanism, Walther [End Page 338] proposed that the true church was "invisible" (52) and should be organized congregationally, not organically constituted by means of a ministerium independent of congregations. Even though Stephan himself proved to be "heterodox," the pastoral calls and administration of the sacraments in the Saxon communities in Missouri were still valid (53). Developing a congregationalist form of governance, Walther would soon butt heads with Grabau, whose anti-Prussian Union emigration had settled in Buffalo, New York, and Milwaukee. Walther consented that the preaching office was a divine institution. But Grabau would not concede that a pastor haphazardly called by a congregation could genuinely absolve or give communion (101). For the Missourians, Grabau represented an attempt to impose the old European order upon the new world. Similar to this conflict with Grabau, the Missourians were soon in conflict with the Bavarian missional pastor Wilhelm Loehe who had been financially supportive of the infant Missouri Synod. Walther even met with Loehe in Germany, but he would not be able to endorse Loehe's conviction that there were "open questions." For example, could faithful Lutherans disagree over how ministry is legitimated, whether through an established ministerium which calls its own or instead via congregational acknowledgement of those set aside for ordination? For Walther, such a question had been settled for good in the Lutheran confessions. Loehe's followers in the United States became the nucleus of the Iowa Synod and, with Loehe, did not believe that confessional truth remained "frozen" from the sixteenth century (297) but instead that it allowed fresh readings of the scriptures to help achieve greater clarity about truth. By bringing up numerous exchanges between Walther and his parishioners, Prange shows Walther to be not a fanatic in matters dealing with fellowship, but instead a man of wisdom and compassion. All in all, Prange provides a delightful read that explains the differences between the various synods and does so in a fair and winsome way. This is must reading for those interested in North American Lutheran history. [End Page 339] Mark Mattes Grand View University Des Moines, Iowa Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

Early Response to COVID-19

Early Response to COVID-19

APA Pleased Over Recent Legislative Wins but Must Keep Pushing

APA Pleased Over Recent Legislative Wins but Must Keep Pushing

Strategies to Enhance Local Government Finance in Nigeria

This study adopted historical approach to political research and used secondary sources of information. This paper focuses on assessing financial challenges facing local governments in Nigeria. The study observed that insufficient allocation from the federation account, lack of effective revenue generation drive, mismanagement of funds, intrusion of the state government into local governments use of funds, amongst others are the major challenges confronting local governments. Nevertheless, if right strategies such as effective planning, accountability, transparency, curbing of financial mismanagement, sound business undertaking, increased fund allocation from federation account are adopted, local Government may be in better position to accelerate the pace of infrastructural development in Nigeria.

Polarization and Accountability in Covid Times

We analyze the relationship between accountability and polarization in the context of the COVID crisis. We make three points. First, when voters perceive the out-party to be ideologically extreme, they are less likely to hold incumbents accountable for poor outcomes via competence-based evaluations. Knowing this, even in the context of major crises, incumbents face weaker incentives to take politically costly measures that would minimize deaths. Second, there is a partisan asymmetry whereby the additional government intrusion associated with effective COVID response can be more politically costly for the right than for the left, because it undercuts the ideological distinctiveness that drives the base-mobilization strategy of the right. Third, this asymmetry generates incentives for politicization of COVID mitigation policies that ultimately lead to partisan differences in mitigation behavior and outcomes. To illustrate this logic, we provide preliminary evidence that COVID death rates are higher in more polarized democracies, and that in one of the most polarized democracies—the United States—COVID deaths have become increasingly correlated with partisanship.

Federalism’s Fallacy at the Forefront of Public Health Law

Amid undulating conceptions of the role and prowess of federalism emerges its central constitutional role: protecting American liberties against unwarranted governmental intrusions. To the extent that federalism is used as a guise for withdrawing fundamental rights to abortion by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, individual rights are sacrificed in contravention of constitutional structural norms.

Deplatforming sexual speech in the age of FOSTA/SESTA

ABSTRACT The 2018 US anti-sex trafficking laws Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) were intended to limit the use of online communication platforms as illegal sexual commerce hubs. Several years later, sex trafficking prosecutions have plummeted, and US law enforcement agencies lament the loss of internet sites like Backpage where they previously identified victims. Instead, a range of serious consequences like the diminishment of global sex workers’ rights and the chilling of sexual speech abound. FOSTA/SESTA are analyzed as part of the deplatforming of sex, and as having emboldened technology corporations to make sweeping changes to the sexual content that can exist on mainstream platforms like Google. Digital platforms are central to sexuality, and thus we must articulate and defend our rights against government intrusion and overreaching corporate content moderation. Citizens deserve to pursue consensual sexual lives and protecting the ability to do so, even when that entails challenging laws and oligopolistic technology corporations’ policies, is a social justice mandate.

Arizona Thoracic Society Supports Mandatory Vaccination of Healthcare Workers

No abstract available. Article truncated after 150 words. I watched much of the past year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic in horror listening to the TV pundits and politicians argue against wearing masks, receiving vaccinations, and in general, undermining the safety and freedoms of all Americans. Nothing is done to regulate commentator or politician disinformation under the excuse that these pundits have the right of free speech as a fundamental liberty. Fundamental liberties are freedoms the population is entitled to fully enjoy without government intrusion. Nevertheless, the proper exercise of these liberties, taken in conjunction with the need for public order, national security, the preservation of moral values, as well as respect for the rights of one’s fellowman—all of this necessarily entails that some restrictions be placed upon these liberties (1). Only the freedom of thought, conscience and opinion are subject to no real restriction. Each and every person is free to think what he …

Strategic Risk and Lobbying: Investigating Lobbying Breadth as Risk Management

Despite many studies investigating how lobbying expenditures enhance performance outcomes, limited attention has been given to understanding the underlying mechanisms driving firm lobbying behaviors—and, particularly, where firms target their lobbying expenditures. We argue lobbying breadth serves as a risk management strategy to both hedge against possible government intrusion and minimize disapproval of firm actions from government officials. As such, we posit firms’ strategic risk will positively relate to breadth of lobbying firms’ target. Further, if lobbying breadth serves as risk management strategy, then other aspects that affect decisions about the amount of risk protection a firm may need should also affect this relationship. We argue that CEOs’ ownership and firms’ political uncertainty may exacerbate exposure from firm risk taking to government actions, thus strengthening the insurance relationship. Similarly, we argue available slack, as a form of internal insurance against government actions, will weaken the relationship between strategic risk taking and lobbying breadth. We find support for most of our arguments in a sample of U. S. manufacturing firms. This research extends understanding of lobbying beyond the predominant focus on expenditures and securing beneficial outcomes. Exploring how lobbying breadth serves an important risk management role also offers insights into firm nonmarket strategy.

New Writs of Assistance: Geofence Warrants and the Fourth Amendment

Geofence search warrants, also known as reverse location search warrants, are a new, digital version of the general warrants, or “writs of assistance”, that were at the heart of the Fourth Amendment’s inclusion in the Bill of Rights. Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has been consistently challenged for over a century in the face of technology advancements such as the wiretap, computers, the internet, and mobile phones. But the challenge posed by geofence warrants, in which the government can demand that private sector technology providers disclose a list of mobile devices in a defined place at a defined time, may be the Fourth Amendment’s most vexing encounter yet. When combined with protections provided by the Stored Communications Act, enacted in 1986, it positions the courts as a porous last line of defense between government intrusion and expectations of privacy in the mobile device era. This Article explains why this situation is perilous, and describes the widening gap between existing Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and rapidly advancing technology to obtain, aggregate, and correlate data about citizens, both anonymous and uniquely identifying, to surveil and profile the public, with a focus on geofence warrants as this era’s emblematic investigative tool. This Article will explain why anonymization is a weak safeguard and argue for more stringent requirements to bring judicial domain knowledge in line with that of law enforcement officers, who have greater access to specialized training in digital forensics. Lastly, the Article will discuss needed reforms to current statutory protections that no longer possess the ability to constrain government intrusion into our daily lives. The judiciary and legislatures place checks on one another, but both are quickly being left behind by technology advances, big data, and private sector inclusion in modern law enforcement.

The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783– 1840 by Kristopher Maulden

Reviewed by: The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783– 1840 by Kristopher Maulden Marcus Gallo (bio) Keywords Old Northwest, Federalism, Federalist party, Republican party The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783– 1840. By Kristopher Maulden. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2019. Pp. 278. Cloth, $40.00.) In The Federalist Frontier, Kristopher Maulden examines the legacy of Federalism in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, arguing that Federalist ideals and influence long outlasted the party’s ability to compete successfully for office. He draws a unifying thread between the Federalists, “energetic” Republicans, National Republicans, and Western Whigs who dominated state politics in the Old Northwest. He does so by tracing a handful of key ideals that these politicians shared: a desire for government intervention that would promote and protect education, law and order, and business. The book culminates with a description of Abraham Lincoln in the year 1840, showing how his politics at that time fit neatly into this long-standing “Federalist” tradition. Government officials took time to establish Federalist policy in the West in the years after the American Revolutionary War. Maulden details the problems in the Ohio Valley during the 1780s: The government had a [End Page 684] nominal right to the region, but could not control either the Indians or squatters who occupied it. By the 1790s, Federalists focused on increasing national power there, first by using the army and a series of aggressive treaty negotiations to extinguish Indian titles to the land, then by establishing federal policies for land distribution, which would ultimately result in the population increases needed for the establishment of states. They did so over the protests of Republicans who objected to high taxes to pay for perpetual wars. While this discussion is thorough, Maulden could have done more to address the threat of breakaway movements, which would have helped to contextualize the national government’s urgency regarding the West. Some of Maulden’s best writing links quintessential Federalist attitudes with their approach to the West. Because they held central authority, rationality, and commercial development in high regard, the rectangular survey was therefore a key component to establishing legal titles and stability for frontier families. The rectangular survey necessitated large sales of hundreds of acres at a time, but Federalists had few qualms about frontier speculation. Wanting a hierarchical, prosperous society run by gentlemen, they detested squatters and found gentlemanly land speculators who promised to develop their communities attractive. In addition, Federalists wanted to set aside tax money for schools that would promote an orderly citizenry that would respect law and religion. Republicans instead focused on winning electoral strategies, emphasizing expanding suffrage for white men and attempting to limit the possibilities for land speculation in favor of small purchases for bona fide settlers. In contrast, haughty Federalist opposition to early Ohio state-hood did the party few favors with voters. Federalists followed this up with other losing political positions, such as opposition to the Louisiana Purchase. While some Federalist politicians continued to win occasional elections in Ohio in the early nineteenth century, voters abandoned the party by the time that Indiana and Illinois became states in the last half of the 1810s. In Maulden’s words, “Conventional wisdom presents this period of Jeffersonian Republican triumph as a marked retreat from Federalist leadership and ideals” (89). Instead, Maulden asserts that “energetic” Republicans continued to embrace key Federalist policies, including rapid westward expansion and taking a hard line against Indians. At the same time, these Republicans tried to limit the tax burden while making the government more responsive to settlers through institutions like publicly [End Page 685] funded schools and central state banks: “As a result, energetic Republicans in Indiana and Illinois enlarged, not shrank, the American state” (90). This stands in contrast to the classic Jeffersonian Republican embrace of minimally intrusive government. Maulden’s narrative of the early politics of Indiana and Illinois is thus contrarian: Republicans like William Henry Harrison enthusiastically advanced frontier policies established by Federalists. Why did Federalist policies do well in the Old Northwest while the Federalist Party did not? Maulden attributes this to the “grand dissonance of American political thought, in which Americans embrace government power...

Brief of Professors of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner in Carlisle V. Kentucky

Abstract Mr. Carlisle was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by a police officer for suspected vehicle equipment violations. The officer lacked reasonable suspicion, let alone probable cause, to suspect Mr. Carlisle was armed and dangerous, or that he was guilty of engaging in any criminal conduct. All that the officer knew was that Mr. Carlisle, a black man, was a passenger in a vehicle stopped for a minor traffic violation. Despite the absence of any fact-based justification for doing so, the officer demanded that Mr. Carlisle provide identification and ran a criminal background check. The Supreme Court of Kentucky held that police officers are automatically entitled to demand that a passenger like Mr. Carlisle provide identification and then to conduct background investigations of them merely because the passengers were riding in a motor vehicle stopped for a minor traffic violation. This approach—allowing police unregulated discretion to conduct criminal history checks of every vehicle occupant at every traffic stop, permits precisely the sort of arbitrary and unjustified government intrusions prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. By failing to impose even minimal Fourth Amendment standards, the Kentucky Supreme Court grants officers arbitrary authority to subject people to a seizure and search based solely on a hunch. In the absence of facts creating at least reasonable suspicion that passengers are engaged in criminal conduct, or reason to believe that they pose a threat to officer safety, requiring mere passengers to identify themselves and running criminal background checks on them unnecessarily extends the length of detention (a seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes) and exceeds the mission of a valid traffic stop. If allowed to stand, the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision would permit officers to exercise arbitrary and unjustified authority in more than 1.5 million traffic stops conducted every month.