Overivew

Privacy in the United States is not merely eroding — it is fundamentally absent. Our bodily autonomy, personal data, digital activity, private spaces, financial records, and everyday movements are routinely monitored, collected, sold, and analyzed without meaningful consent. We need a modern, enforceable federal privacy standard that protects every person’s right to control their body, their data, and their private life.

Why We Are Raising Our Voices
Privacy is a civil right. It protects autonomy, dignity, safety, and freedom. Yet in the United States, privacy protections are fragmented, outdated, and inadequate for the realities of modern technology. Individuals face pervasive surveillance, data extraction, and inference-based profiling without consent or recourse.

We call on Congress to enact a comprehensive federal privacy law that protects eleven essential domains of privacy, each necessary for safeguarding personal sovereignty and civil liberties.

The Eleven Domains of Privacy That Must Be Protected

1. Bodily Privacy
   Protection of medical data, reproductive status, biometrics, genetic information, neurodata, and any data derived from the body.
2. Informational Privacy
   Protection of all personal data generated through devices, services, purchases, and digital interactions.
3. Communication Privacy
   Protection of calls, texts, emails, and digital messages from unauthorized access, scanning, or interception.
4. Territorial Privacy
   Protection of the home and private spaces from surveillance, warrantless intrusion, and smart‑device exploitation.
5. Location Privacy
   Protection against continuous tracking through GPS, cell towers, license‑plate readers, and geofencing warrants.
6. Associational Privacy
   Protection of political, religious, social, and community affiliations from surveillance or inference.
7. Financial Privacy
   Protection of spending habits, transaction histories, credit data, and consumer-purchase tracking.
8. Behavioral Privacy
   Protection from profiling based on habits, browsing, device usage, or inferred traits.
9. Cognitive and Emotional Privacy
   Protection from technologies that infer mental states, emotions, or intentions through biometrics or neurotech.
10. Anti‑Surveillance Protections
    Prohibition of random surveillance in homes, workplaces, public streets, and digital environments.
11. Protection from Intrusion, Exploitation, and Misrepresentation
    Safeguards against intrusion upon seclusion, appropriation of likeness, disclosure of private facts, and false light.

 
Why This Is Urgent: Real Scenarios Showing the Harm (Examples)
Scenario 1: Pregnancy Surveillance and Medical Data Exposure
A period‑tracking app sells reproductive data to brokers. Insurers and third parties infer pregnancy status without consent. Existing laws fail: HIPAA does not cover most consumer health apps; data brokers operate with minimal regulation.

Scenario 2: Smart Devices Spying in the Home
A smart TV records viewing habits, voice commands, and household activity. The data is sold without explicit consent. Existing laws fail: No federal law requires explicit consent for device telemetry or limits data resale.

Scenario 3: Public Surveillance Without Oversight
Cities deploy facial recognition and license‑plate readers that track daily movement. Data is shared with private vendors. Existing laws fail: No federal limits on public surveillance; Fourth Amendment protections are narrow in public spaces.

Scenario 4: Private Messages Scanned by AI
A messaging app scans encrypted conversations for “safety,” flagging private discussions and sharing them with reviewers. Existing laws fail: ECPA does not address algorithmic scanning or on-device surveillance.

Scenario 5: Purchases Used to Profile and Discriminate
A retailer sells purchase histories to data brokers. An insurer raises premiums based on inferred health risks. Existing laws fail: No federal protections against profiling based on consumer purchases.

Scenario 6: Your Face Used Without Consent
A photo taken at a public event is uploaded to a stock site. A woman’s face appears in political ads she does not support. Existing laws fail: No federal protection against commercial misuse of likeness; privacy torts vary by state.

 What We Demand
We call on Congress to enact a federal privacy law that includes:

• Explicit, affirmative consent for all data collection and sharing
• A ban on random surveillance in homes, workplaces, public streets, and digital environments
• A federal right to bodily and reproductive privacy
• Device privacy protections ensuring that ownership equals data ownership
• Strong communication privacy protections
• Limits on location tracking and geofencing warrants
• Protection of political, religious, and social associations
• Financial privacy safeguards
• Restrictions on cognitive and emotional inference technologies
• Limits on algorithmic profiling
• Uniform national standards for privacy torts

Closing Statement
Privacy is not a privilege. It is a civil right essential to autonomy, dignity, and democratic participation. The United States must adopt a modern, comprehensive privacy framework that protects individuals from bodily surveillance, digital exploitation, algorithmic profiling, and unauthorized data collection.

We urge Congress to act NOW! 

And we urge every person who values freedom, autonomy, and dignity to sign this petition.