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Health & Fitness

Is the Mo. DOR violating your 4th Amendment Rights while breaking Mo. Law?

Mo. Dept. of Revenue changed the procedure for citizens to get or renew driver's license or CCW. The new policy violates Missouri Law and, I believe, violates our 4th amendment rights!

By now, many of you may have heard about how the Missouri Dept. of Revenue is scanning source documents of Missouri Citizens and sending the info to an out of state, central repository. They are using equipment to do this that was bought with a grant from the Dept. of Homeland Security (federal). They are in the process, we don't know how far, of using cameras, also bought with DHS grants, to take pictures that fully capture the biometric data of every Missouri Citizen applying for a driver's license or CCW permit! Some argue that biometric data is more identifying than your finger prints! This is a violation of our 4th amendment rights AND a violation of Missouri law yet the Governor has refused to step in and stop it and thus far our Missouri Attorney General remains silent! This must be stopped!

Please allow me to give a very brief run down of how this unfolded.... As you may know, I'm Blessed to have been elevated to a Senate Leadership Post as the Senate Majority Whip. As a member of Senate Leadership, I am "At the Table" for all of the closed door, high level meetings pertaining to the Senate. I feel like I should mention how important it is for the people of Western STL County and all of Franklin to actually have a member of Senate Leadership as their senator! PLEASE do not receive what I just said as me attempting to toot my own horn as I am speaking very practically about the fact that constituents who live in the districts of senate leaders are more likely to be "in the know" concerning these types of things. Anyway, on Monday we had a senate leadership meeting where the director of DOR was brought in to answer questions. As you can imagine, the director was skirting around every question he was asked and finally I got sick of the dancing and elevated the the tone. I did not allow him to answer me in the manner he had been answering others and finally pinned him down and got the truth out of him. Here's the black and white truth of the matter, straight from his mouth:

DOR is not being forced or compelled to do this by any state statute. DOR has unilaterally made the decision to change the process with out any input from the legislature. DOR has the authority to STOP this Orwellian invasion of our privacy any time they choose. DOR has not yet come forward with an agreement or plan to end this invasion of privacy as of this writing.

I have, very clearly, and in no uncertain terms, made it abundantly clear to DOR that if they do not stop this violation of our fourth amendment rights that I will spend the next 5 or 6 sessions making it my personal mission to punish them for this atrocity. I did not speak to them in normal, politically correct, tones or words. My point and my position on this issue has been made very clear and articulated in such a way that there is no way they are unaware of the WAR they will have with me for the remainder of my time in office if they don't do the right thing.

I will continue to attack this issue and it won't necessarily be pretty but God made some men to be Men of War and others to be Men of Peace! Thank God for both but I think you know which category I fit in to. I will do all I can to see this unlawful act stopped.

In closing, may I remind you that one of the reasons the democrats, and even some of the republican establishment, come after me so hard is because I am a Man of War! Politically correct people believe we can accomplish all that's needed without ever going to war, figuratively or literally, but some of us know better and this may very well be one of those rare instances where war is the only answer.

Please spread the word about all of this to as many people as possible as it is not likely that I can stop this by my self.

Yours in liberty,
-Brian Nieves

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