Each State Should Have Its Own Digital Bill of Rights It was James Madison who drafted the proposals that became the United States Bill of Rights. Madison introduced them in Congress in June of 1789 and Congress revised and proposed 12 amendments on September 25; the states ratified 10 of them in December 1791. Those 10 amendments are the Bill of Rights. Did Madison worry about forgetting something important while he drafted his proposals? Probably. But what he couldn't have foreseen is the digital and AI age with its vast possibilities of citizens' total surveillance, total control and total subjugation. Much surveillance and control has already been established over the last decades. For example automated license-plate readers, camera networks, location tracking, biometric monitoring, health databases, behavioral data collection, and vast commercial data sharing with government agencies. It's high time to reclaim lost rights and to prevent that people's unalienable rights are not wiped out by technocrats' use of artificial intelligence. Patrick Wood and Courtenay Turner Wrote a Model Digital Bill of Rights for the States Patrick Wood and Courtenay Turner decided to write a model amendment of a Digital Bill of Rights providing urgently needed protections against digital and AI tyranny over citizens. However, there is a crucial difference between their model Digital Bill of Rights and Madison's proposals: theirs' is not a federal Bill of Rights but one for the states. Each state, ideally, should have its own Digital Bill of Rights. Why? Because, Courtenay says, it's better to have fifty firewalls than just one: "It is much harder to co-opt fifty individual states than it is to co-opt the central federal apparatus. "And so the hope is that through the 50 states we can start to set a precedence one at a time and there will be a ripple effect throughout where people know other states and can start to model this." Courtenay already proposed the model amendment for a Digital Bill of Rights to lawmakers in her home state Tennessee. The process, she learnt, would take until 2030 to achieve ratification as a constitutional amendment. That's why she is currently working on drafting four so-called "bridge bills" for the upcoming legislative session in Tennessee. The idea is that these bills would put key protections in place much sooner and bridge the years until ratification. The Metaphysics of the Declaration of Independence How does one go about writing a model Digital Bill of Rights? Patrick Wood, Courtenay told me, wrote the first draft: "He did a phenomenal job. But I felt what was really missing was the metaphysical firewall. And to me, that is the bulwark. And that is why the Declaration of Independence was drafted. "I think mostly what we've lost, in particular in our education system, but even in our civic arena, is that most of the elected officials don't have a true understanding of the metaphysics of the declaration of independence." She argues rights must come from a source higher than any government or company, as is the case in the Declaration of Independence. Otherwise, whoever grants a right can take it back, for any reason and at any time. The idea that rights come from a creator is therefore the metaphysical firewall that makes humans' rights unalienable, including humans' digital rights in the age of AI. "It has to be primordial, it has to be outside of this world. Otherwise, anybody who grants you rights can easily revoke them." But "unalienable" doesn't mean that such rights can't be lost. We all know very well that they can be lost if people don't defend them - and not just incrementally and almost imperceptibly but from one day to the next as during Covid. "We need to stand up for our own rights. They are unalienable, but we need to ensure that they're not taken away." The 15 Articles in the Model Digital Bill of Rights for the States Patrick and Courtenay's model amendment consists of the following fifteen articles: Source of Rights Definitions Foundational Principles Personhood and Mental Privacy Digital Privacy and Surveillance Data Control and Deletion AI in Government Property and Cash Digital Identity Consent of the Governed Free Expression Foreign Threats Digital Due Process Oversight and Transparency Interpretation and Future Technology Let's Use the Agency We Still Have Many people today feel overwhelmed and powerless faced with the extraordinarily rapid developments in AI. But Courtenay hopes that the model amendment will inspire people and show them a realistic path to establish control over AI instead of being controlled and consumed by it. She said during the interview: "There's so much apathy and people have just completely given up on the system. And I'm not saying that our system isn't flawed or corrupt. I I think it's both. "But I still think we have a lot of agency and people should utilize the agency that we have. You can't complain about the system when you're not taking action. So I really encourage people. I hope that this Digital Bill of Rights inspires them. "And I hope there are people who have the time and the desire, who will take action. And I hope that this [document] can be a guideline and an inspiration for them." Introduce Your Lawmakers to the Digital Bill of Rights If you're one of those who have the time and the desire, please contact your state's lawmakers and introduce them to Courtenay's and Patrick's model Digital Bill of Rights. I'll do a second interview with Courtenay about the Digital Bill of Rights where she will discuss the feedback she received from her Tennessee lawmakers and from lawyers she consulted. She will also talk about the details of the amendment process and the "bridge bills" she is currently working on. CHAPTERS 00:06 Why Each State Needs a Digital Bill of Rights 01:57 Bridge Bills and the Road to 2030 05:09 Unalienable Rights and the Creator as Load-Bearing 07:01 Federalism, the Tenth Amendment, and Federal Purse Strings 09:08 How Courtenay and Patrick Wood Drafted the Document 11:24 The EU AI Act and Control-Based Frameworks 12:13 Boston Global Forum and the AI Wisdom Society 19:26 The Push for a Global Constitution by 2027 21:22 Being Versus Becoming: Transhumanism and Technocracy 23:55 Title Page and the 15 Articles at a Glance 26:00 Human Primacy Over the Machine 30:02 Digital ID and Coercive Control 33:31 Are Rights Alienable? The Duty to Defend Them 37:53 Articles 1–4: Source of Rights, Definitions, and Personhood 39:57 Social-Emotional Learning, Neural Data, and the LER 43:07 Articles 5–6: Digital Privacy, Flock Cameras, and Data Deletion 48:00 Article 7: AI in Governance and the SAG-AFTRA Deal 51:33 Article 8: Tokenization, Cash, and Programmable Money 56:09 Cash Laws, School Payments, and ESA Crypto Wallets 58:56 Article 9: Digital Identity and the Analog Life 01:00:14 Real ID and the Need for Informed Consent 01:02:20 Interoperable ID, Proof of Persona, and the Cybernetic Organism 01:08:13 Nature, Screens, and the Simulacrum 01:09:48 Article 10: Code Is Not Law 01:11:27 Public-Private Partnerships and the Technocrat Worldview 01:15:18 Technocracy's Roots, Cybersyn, and Oak Ridge 01:18:38 Universal High Income and Energy Credits 01:20:41 Social Engineering and the Analog Backlash 01:24:16 Articles 11–14: Speech, Foreign Threats, Due Process, Oversight 01:27:13 Article 15: Fixed Human Nature and Non-Suspendable Rights 01:28:18 The Wrongful Birth Case and Inherent Worth 01:34:04 Assistive Technology Versus Transhumanism RESOURCES A Digital Bill of Rights for the States: A Model Amendment to State Constitutions for the Age of Artificial Intelligence The Courtenay Turner Podcast Patrick Wood and Courtenay Turner: The Final Betrayal: How Technocracy Destroyed America Courtenay's Substack