The American Civilian Sovereignty Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, communications, behaviors, beliefs, locations, relationships, and data shall not be violated by any entity — government, corporate, or otherwise — without the free, specific, informed, and revocable consent of each individual, or, in the case of government action, without a warrant issued upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the person, place, or data to be examined.

No entity — regardless of size, structure, or relationship to government — shall surveil, track, profile, or collect data on the people of the United States without meeting the requirements of this section. This right is not conditioned on the scale of the entity violating it. Every American civilian holds this right fully against every entity that would violate it.

The right of the people to form their own beliefs, make their own decisions, and control their own information environment is a fundamental right of free people and shall not be abridged by any entity.

No entity — government or private — shall deploy any system, algorithm, artificial intelligence mechanism, or other technological instrument to: (a) deliberately engineer emotional states — including fear, anger, anxiety, or social isolation — in individuals or populations for the purpose of behavioral control, political compliance, or commercial exploitation without free and informed consent; (b) construct or maintain information environments that systematically restrict, suppress, or distort the information available to individuals for the purpose of producing ideological conformity or behavioral compliance; (c) exploit psychological vulnerabilities — including grief, fear, loneliness, financial stress, or addiction — identified through surveillance data, for the purpose of targeting or manipulating individuals; (d) operate campaigns that systematically manufacture social division, distrust, demoralization, or political conflict within the American civilian population; (e) generate, amplify, or distribute synthetic or deceptive content — including deepfakes or coordinated inauthentic behavior — for the purpose of altering the beliefs or behaviors of American civilians.

The right to an unmanipulated mind and an unmanipulated information environment is not waivable by any contract, terms of service, or user agreement.

The protections of this Amendment, and the protections of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to this Constitution, shall apply with equal force to any entity — domestic or foreign, wherever incorporated, organized, or operating — that collects, processes, stores, sells, or otherwise acts upon personal data relating to any American civilian at any scale; or operates any system capable of shaping, targeting, or manipulating the information environment, behavior, or beliefs of any American civilian; or provides surveillance, behavioral profiling, psychological manipulation, or population management services to any government entity or private actor targeting American civilians.

The constitutional rights of the American people are not defeated by routing their violation through a private intermediary. They are not diminished by the small size of the entity violating them. They are not defeated by incorporating the violating entity outside the United States. They are not defeated by exporting American civilian data offshore for processing and returning the results domestically.

No person or entity shall structure, divide, or organize surveillance or manipulation operations across multiple legal entities — domestic or foreign — for the purpose or effect of evading the protections of this Amendment. The aggregate activity of any affiliated group of entities under common ownership, control, or financial direction shall be treated as the activity of a single entity. Private equity firms, institutional asset managers, holding companies, controlling investors, and foreign sovereign wealth funds shall bear constitutional responsibility for surveillance and manipulation conducted by entities within their control or investment portfolios, to the same extent as if they had conducted that activity directly.

No government agency — federal, state, or local — shall acquire, purchase, solicit, or receive any surveillance data, behavioral profile, psychological assessment, or derived analytical product from any entity — domestic or foreign — that the government could not have lawfully collected directly under this Constitution.

No government agency shall route the acquisition of American civilian surveillance data through a foreign government, foreign intelligence service, or foreign entity for the purpose or effect of circumventing the constitutional requirements applicable to direct domestic collection.

The rights of the American people cannot be circumvented by outsourcing their violation to private contractors. They cannot be circumvented by outsourcing their violation to foreign governments or foreign entities either.

No entity — government or private — shall construct, operate, or participate in any system designed to manage the American civilian population through surveillance, behavioral modification, information control, economic coercion, or any combination of these mechanisms without the express democratic authorization of the people through their elected representatives and subject to full public transparency.

The American people are not a population to be managed. They are a free people who govern themselves.

The personal data of American civilians — their location, their health, their beliefs, their relationships, their fears, their psychological vulnerabilities, their private lives — is not a commodity. It is not a product. It is not an asset. It is an extension of the person to whom it belongs, and it carries the full dignity and constitutional protection of that person.

No entity — government or private, domestic or foreign — shall sell, license, transfer, or otherwise exchange for consideration the personal data of American civilians without the specific, informed, and revocable consent of each individual whose data is included in the transaction. Consent given for one purpose or to one entity does not authorize sale to any other entity or for any other purpose.

The sale of any data identifying, predicting, or assessing the psychological vulnerabilities of American civilians is prohibited absolutely — without exception, without consent, without commercial justification. The psychological vulnerabilities of a free person are not for sale under the laws of this republic.

Every American civilian has the constitutional right to know what personal data any entity holds about them; to know to whom that data has been sold, transferred, or licensed, and for what purpose; to demand the permanent deletion of their data from any entity that holds it; and to permanently prohibit the sale of their data by any entity through a simple, free, nationally accessible mechanism. Liability for the unlawful sale of American civilian data travels with the data through every transaction. Every entity in a data resale chain bears constitutional responsibility for violations arising from that data.

Congress shall enact legislation establishing the National Do Not Sell Registry — a permanent, free, universally accessible mechanism through which any American may prohibit the commercial sale of their personal data — and the National Data Transaction Registry — through which any American may view every transaction involving their data, who purchased it, and for what stated purpose.

There shall be a Constitutional People's Counsel, an officer of the Congress of the United States, who shall serve as the permanent independent public advocate for the rights of the American people established by this Amendment and by the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to this Constitution.

The Constitutional People's Counsel shall not be subject to removal, direction, or budget control by the President or any executive branch official. The President shall have no authority over the appointment, tenure, or operations of the Constitutional People's Counsel.

The Constitutional People's Counsel shall be appointed by joint resolution of Congress for a single term of seven years and may be removed only by impeachment for cause. Funding shall be provided by mandatory appropriation written into statute. No President or executive branch official may impound, rescind, or reduce such funding.

The Constitutional People's Counsel shall have standing to bring civil and constitutional actions in any federal court on behalf of the American people against any entity — government or corporate — that violates the rights established by this Amendment. This standing is self-executing and does not require authorization from any branch of the federal government.

The Constitutional People's Counsel shall publish complete, unclassified quarterly reports to Congress and the public covering all investigations, enforcement actions, litigation, and findings. These reports shall be permanently and freely accessible to every American. No branch of government shall have authority to restrict, classify, or suppress the public reports of the People's Counsel.

Any person whose rights under this Amendment are violated shall have a direct cause of action against the responsible entity in any court of competent jurisdiction. No arbitration agreement, class action waiver, or terms of service provision shall be enforceable to bar a claim under this Amendment.

Congress shall enact implementing legislation establishing remedies — including damages, injunctive relief, and attorney's fees — sufficient to make this right meaningful and fully enforceable.