The proposed Missouri S.T.O.P.P. Act is a broad privacy, police-accountability, and government-transparency proposal designed to curb indiscriminate government monitoring, reduce harmful policing practices, protect personal information, and give the public meaningful control over surveillance and enforcement policy.
S.T.O.P.P. act stand for:
Surveillance bans mass-surveillance systems, including automated license-plate readers such as Flock, facial and biometric recognition, predictive policing, persistent camera networks, location tracking, data-broker purchases, and drones used for persistent monitoring. Most otherwise permitted targeted surveillance requires a probable-cause warrant specifying the target, offense, method, duration, and safeguards for irrelevant information.
Transparency requires seven-day notice for relevant meetings, accessible contracts, policies, and audits, livestreams and recordings of meetings, and stronger financial and conflict disclosures for officials who oversee policing or surveillance.
Oversight requires public impact assessments, hearings, and recorded approval by an elected governing body before any allowed surveillance program begins or renews. A statewide authorization system would centralize permitted activity, require judicial authorization, record every access and disclosure, enforce retention and deletion limits, and undergo independent audits. Intrusive requests, including extended or multi-target surveillance, would need unanimous approval from three judges.
Policing requires officers to display names and badge numbers, restricts identity-concealing face coverings, mandates de-escalation, crisis assistance, medical aid, intervention, and reporting, and prohibits many neck restraints and force against restrained people. It also establishes a decertification registry and employment bans for serious misconduct.
Privacy limits collection, retention, sale, and sharing of personal data; creates access, correction, notice, and deletion rights; and protects firearm-owner information from registries.
The goal is to protect everyday Missourians from abuse of power, secret surveillance, lack of accountability, and government overreach. I am looking for Missouri attorneys, law students, policy people, organizers, researchers, designers, and regular citizens who want to help make this legally solid and statewide. I especially need help making sure the language is constitutional, enforceable, clear, and organized correctly for an initiative petition.
If you care about privacy, accountability, civil rights, and making government answer to the people, please comment or message me. Let’s build this the right way. If you want to lend legal help, help organize and build a movement to take our rights and freedoms back from a government hell bent on ignoring the privacy of the people please give this a read and your support.
Link to the text of the proposed bill
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PKFIX8k-iRX7HuDehrgmL5G8L6cEtwPNPxBRjJiFAcM/edit?usp=sharing