Liberal democracies usually operate under the principle that you can ask anything you want of someone, and it's up to them to say "no" if they find it disagreeable. The law is then there to step in when there is a dispute and say which party is right. Even the Bill of Rights depends upon people specifically asserting their rights; if a person voluntarily chooses to incriminate themselves, they've still incriminated themselves, the 5th amendment just states that if the government asks them to bear witness against themself and they refuse to speak, they have done nothing wrong.
While this can lead to unfortunate power imbalances and information asymmetries, it's hard to see how the legal system could operate otherwise. If people were forbidden from asking - who would do the forbidding? What if this is used to prevent contracts that would legitimately be in the best interest of both parties? What if it were used to prevent emerging power centers from challenging the power of the organization that can determine what's legal to ask? How would you even know that such a question has occurred, if one party says "Don't talk about this"?
Probably the best we can hope for is for Congress to pass a law specifically enumerating what electronic records the FBI may request. That seems to be what this article is calling for - consciousness-raising, and public debate. There's plenty of precedent for this, eg. the Miranda rights came from a court case where it was determined that police could not simply assume that a suspect was aware of their constitutional rights, and had to explicitly have them enumerated. But the fact that this needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis is a feature of the legal system, not a bug.
While this can lead to unfortunate power imbalances and information asymmetries, it's hard to see how the legal system could operate otherwise. If people were forbidden from asking - who would do the forbidding? What if this is used to prevent contracts that would legitimately be in the best interest of both parties? What if it were used to prevent emerging power centers from challenging the power of the organization that can determine what's legal to ask? How would you even know that such a question has occurred, if one party says "Don't talk about this"?
Probably the best we can hope for is for Congress to pass a law specifically enumerating what electronic records the FBI may request. That seems to be what this article is calling for - consciousness-raising, and public debate. There's plenty of precedent for this, eg. the Miranda rights came from a court case where it was determined that police could not simply assume that a suspect was aware of their constitutional rights, and had to explicitly have them enumerated. But the fact that this needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis is a feature of the legal system, not a bug.