Freedom of the press, which is one of the greatest bulwarks of a democratic society, is ironically also one of the most vulnerable of our constitutional rights. The proposed legislation endangers the media's constitutionality-guaranteed rights while offering public figures no effective new protection against privacy intrusions and harassment. It is both destructive of our liberties and redundant. There are already state laws in existence which prohibit the kind of behavior we condemn in some of the paparazzi. There are state civil and criminal remedies for practically all of the conduct the Feinstein-Hatch bill would federalize.
False imprisonment is but one example.
Unlike these state laws which maintain a balance between First Amendment rights and privacy rights, the Feinstein-Hatch proposal is aimed specifically at the press and criminalizes legal First Amendment activity. No matter what the issue, creating new federal crimes is always a dangerous business, particularly when we attach lengthy mandatory minimum sentences. We do not have a federal police force. Only the FBI is available to enforce the few other national crimes that now exist, and, fortunately, we have been able to limit the size and the power of the FBI so that it has not become too great a threat to individual liberty, notwithstanding the abusive reign of J.Edgar Hoover. This, too, raises serious First Amendment concerns.