Commentary: Security legislation and the knock Floridians don't want to hear - Orlando Sentinel

Getting your

Trinity Audioplayer ready...A postcard criticizing a public official should not end with unidentified investigators at your front door. But that is exactly what happened last October to the O’Garas, a family outside Tampa, after Mr. O’Gara sent a sharply worded message to Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Blaise Ingoglia. The investigative unit from Ingoglia’s own department later confirmed it was assessing whether any public threat existed. Still, for the O’Garas — and for many Floridians watching — the encounter felt like an outrageous act of intimidation for legally protected speech.

That moment should be a flashing warning light as lawmakers consider passing House Bill 945 and its Senate companion SB 1712.

Supporters describe the goals of this proposed legislation as a modernization of Florida’s security posture. In reality, these bills would establish something unprecedented at the state level: an operational, action-oriented intelligence unit — effectively a state-level, CIA-style counterintelligence and counterterrorism apparatus — tasked with identifying perceived threats to Florida from enemies, friends, businesses, nonprofits, and individuals alike. Even if well-intentioned, that represents a profound shift in how state government approaches its own citizens.

Americans have seen where this road can lead. After surveillance abuses in the 1960s — when federal agencies monitored Americans based on associations and viewpoints — public outrage forced new guardrails into law. Special courts were created to oversee surveillance requests, and procedures were designed to prevent ideology from becoming the trigger for government scrutiny. The lesson was simple: unchecked intelligence powers drift toward abuse.

HB 945 contains no comparable safeguards.

Subsection (2) uses language about “inimical values,” “opinions,” and “viewpoints” when defining potential threats. Those words invite a system where belief becomes a factor in intelligence decisions — without the oversight structures history taught us were necessary. When ideology enters the statutory framework and guardrails are absent, mission creep is not hypothetical; it is predictable.

Floridians’ reaction to the O’Garas’ experience does not exist in a vacuum. Across the state, residents are already complaining about expanding surveillance tools now being used by police— from cell-site simulators known as Stingrays to automated license-plate reader networks such as Flock Safety — that can track movements and associations with little public visibility and no warrants. Against that backdrop, creating a new intelligence unit with broad and ambiguous authority risks deepening distrust rather than strengthening security.

Investigators may believe they are acting responsibly. Yet to the people on the receiving end, the message can feel unmistakable: speak too sharply, and the state might come knocking. A free society does not require arrests to chill speech — the perception of surveillance is often enough.

Florida’s constitutional tradition should push lawmakers toward caution. Our open-government laws exist because we believe power works best in the sunlight. Building an intelligence structure that can weigh ideology alongside conduct risks eroding that trust overnight. Once citizens begin to wonder whether criticism of public officials might trigger scrutiny, participation in civic life inevitably shrinks.

There is a better path. If the Legislature believes a counterintelligence capability is necessary, it should be grounded in precise, conduct-based criteria and meaningful guardrails that mirror lessons learned at the federal level. Precision strengthens security; ambiguity invites lawsuits, public backlash, and constitutional conflict.

Floridians are not naïve about threats. We expect our government to keep us safe — but also to remember the hard-earned lessons of history: intelligence powers untethered from oversight and aimed at ideology inevitably collide with the freedoms they claim to protect.

Before HB 945 becomes law, legislators should narrow its language, add real safeguards and reassure the public that dissent — even sharp, uncomfortable dissent — will never be mistaken for danger. Because once people begin to believe that their viewpoints, rather than their actions, are what government is watching, the damage to freedom has already begun.

Bob Shaw is the chairman of the First Amendment Foundation.