“If the problem is government accessing private information, the answer is not to ban infrastructure. The answer is to strengthen the constitutional limits on government power.”
The following has been adapted from an excerpt of the Frontier Weekly Newsletter written by Tanner Avery for the May 21st edition.
Recently, we’ve been having a lot of conversations at Frontier about something people across the nation, and here in Montana, have vocalized as a reason they oppose data centers. And to be frank, it’s also something I am deeply concerned about: a government mass surveillance network.
It’s why we fought to protect Montanans from government abuse of facial recognition technology in 2023. It’s also why, in 2021, we helped write the legislatively referred constitutional amendment that protects electronic data and communications from government abuse, which Montana voters overwhelmingly passed in 2022.
But being concerned about mass surveillance doesn’t mean every tech policy “solution” actually protects privacy. In fact, some of the ideas being floated would move us in the opposite direction by requiring more ID verification, more data collection, and more government control over how Montanans access basic things like the internet.
That’s the point Kendall made this week:
The very real concern over a surveillance state should not lead us to the wrong target. If the problem is government accessing private information, the answer is not to ban infrastructure. The answer is to strengthen the constitutional limits on government power.
Montana should be a place where people are free to build, create, and innovate, while also being strongly protected from government overreach. Those ideas are not in conflict. They go hand in hand.
