Published state initiative · Version 1.0
A state constitutional framework for liberty in the Digital Age, accompanied by proposed statutory implementation and a complete Judiciary development package.
Publication status: Version 1.0 · September 2026 · First Publication. The proposed Act is a draft for Legislative Council and Judiciary review and is not presented as enacted law.
The framework
The South Carolina framework begins from the premise that liberties secured by the United States and South Carolina constitutions remain applicable as technology changes. It identifies protected interests in digital information connected to identity, body, communications, biometrics, precise location, and lawful private activity.
It is designed as a technology-neutral framework: constitutional protections do not depend on a particular vendor, product, architecture, medium, or method of collection.
The Bill of Digital Rights
Rather than reducing the framework to topic summaries, this section presents the actual articles of the South Carolina Bill of Digital Rights. Open any article to read its full published text.
14 numbered articles + Final Article · Version 1.0 · September 2026
The rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States shall apply equally in physical and digital environments.
Freedom of speech, religion, peaceful assembly, association, press, petition, and political participation shall receive equal protection regardless of the technology through which they are exercised.
No individual shall lose constitutional protections because a right is exercised, recorded, stored, transmitted, or affected through digital technology.
Every individual retains a constitutionally protected legal interest in digital information generated by, derived from or uniquely linked to that individual’s identity, body, communications, precise location, or private activities.
Digital property includes, but is not limited to:
The collection, possession, storage, processing, transmission, licensing, monetization, or analysis of such information by another does not, standing alone, extinguish that protected interest.
Every person has the right to be secure against unreasonable digital searches, surveillance, monitoring, tracking, interception, collection, retention, disclosure or analysis of protected digital information.
No person's protected digital information shall be searched, seized, compelled, or acquired by government except pursuant to a particularized warrant supported by probable cause and particularly describing the place to be searched, the person or thing to be seized, and the data to be obtained.
Government shall not evade constitutional limitations by dividing continuous, aggregated, historical, retrospective, or persistent surveillance into individual or isolated observations, queries, data points, or periods of collection.
The constitutional significance of digital surveillance shall be evaluated in light of the nature, precision, duration, aggregation, persistence, and revealing character of the information obtained.
Whether surveillance constitutes a search or otherwise implicates constitutional protections shall be determined by evaluating the surveillance program as a whole rather than by artificially separating individual observations, devices, databases, or periods of collection.
Every individual has the right to meaningful transparency concerning the collection, retention, use, storage, access, analysis, deletion, modification, disclosure, sale, licensing, or transfer of protected digital information by government and by commercial entities engaged in the systematic processing of personal data, subject only to narrowly tailored exceptions necessary to protect an identified investigation, another person’s rights, or information independently protected by law.
Every individual has the right to inspect information maintained about them by government agencies.
Every individual has the right to challenge inaccurate information and seek timely correction.
Government agencies shall establish reasonable procedures for correcting erroneous information that materially affects an individual's rights or interests.
No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, property, employment, licenses, benefits, constitutional rights, or legal protections through automated systems, algorithmic determinations, artificial intelligence, surveillance technologies, or digital profiling without due process of law and meaningful human accountability, including independent human review.
Meaningful human accountability requires independent human review by an identified human decision-maker with authority to independently evaluate the relevant evidence, reject or modify the automated determination, and provide an accountable basis for the final decision. Merely confirming, adopting, transmitting, or implementing an automated output does not constitute independent human review.
Government shall not purchase, license, lease, request, receive, access, query, compel, use, rely upon, benefit from or otherwise acquire from a private person or entity protected digital information that government would be constitutionally prohibited from obtaining directly without required constitutional or judicial process.
The source, custodian, method of collection, contractual arrangement, commercial availability, de-identification, aggregation, pseudonymization, third-party possession, or use of a contractor, surveillance vendor, data broker, artificial intelligence system, nonprofit organization, or other intermediary shall not, standing alone or in combination, diminish constitutional protections.
Every individual retains the freedom to travel, assemble, associate, worship, petition, and engage in lawful activities without continuous digital surveillance or the creation of persistent, aggregated, historical, or retrospective records of a person’s movements, associations, or lawful activities, absent individualized suspicion, a particularized warrant, or a constitutionally recognized exception.
No governmental entity shall evade constitutional limitations by characterizing a movement history as a collection of isolated public observations. The framework expressly distinguishes an isolated observation from the creation of a movement history.
Every individual retains constitutionally protected legal interest and exclusive control of his or her biometric identifiers, including but not limited to behavioral biometrics, facial geometry/characteristics, fingerprints, palm prints, iris or retinal patterns, DNA profiles, voiceprints, gait analysis, keystroke patterns, device-interaction patterns, physiological identifiers, mathematical templates, embeddings, vectors, or other data derived from biological or behavioral characteristics for identification or persistent recognition.
Such information shall receive the highest level of legal protection.
Government agencies entrusted with personal information have a duty to protect that information from unauthorized disclosure, misuse, or unauthorized access.
Individuals shall receive timely notification when their personal information has been compromised through a government data breach.
Constitutional protections shall apply equally regardless of whether information is collected:
Technological advancement shall never diminish constitutional liberty.
The enumeration of certain digital rights within this Bill shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people.
The rights guaranteed by this Bill of Digital Rights shall be interpreted consistently with the Constitutions of the United States and the State of South Carolina. Liberty endures. Technology evolves. The Constitution remains.
Whenever government exercises constitutional authority through digital systems, automated processes, artificial intelligence, or private contractors, the constitutional rights of the people shall remain fully applicable.
Government shall not diminish constitutional protections by delegating governmental functions to private entities or by relying upon digital technologies that are not reasonably capable of meaningful transparency, accountability, independent verification, and lawful review.
These principles shall be interpreted consistently with the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of South Carolina and construed to preserve and strengthen constitutional liberty.
No provision shall be interpreted to authorize surveillance, collection, acquisition, retention, analysis, disclosure, or government access that would otherwise violate the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of the State of South Carolina.
No exception to the rights secured herein shall be implied solely from technological capability, commercial availability, private ownership of infrastructure, contractual consent, third-party possession, algorithmic determination, or administrative convenience.
Every exception created by implementing legislation shall be expressly stated, narrowly drawn, and no broader than constitutionally permissible for the purpose it serves.
Severability. If any provision of this Bill, or its application to any person or circumstance, is held invalid, the remaining provisions and their application shall remain in full force and effect to the fullest extent permitted by law.
Read the framework in its original published format.
Download the South Carolina Bill of Digital Rights ↓Judiciary implementation packet
The 98-page publication is organized so readers can move from the constitutional framework to proposed statutory text, implementation questions, legal authorities, comparative research, and plain-language explanation.
“Government derives its powers from the Constitution—not from technological advancement.”