LAS VEGAS — The face of online privacy rights in the U.S. could very well be a 26-year-old Montana republican representative who posts his votes on Facebook, has a Russian last name, and a father who was born in Iran. His name is Daniel Zolnikov, and he's the unlikely politician who sparked a trend that could sweep through the nation.

In April, Zolnikov sponsored a bill that later became the first law in the United States to require police to get a warrant if they want to access cellphone location data. By doing that, as the American Civil Liberties Union put it, Montana "made history."

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"A government entity may not obtain the location information of an electronic device without a search warrant issued by a duly authorized court," reads the bill, HB 603.

With the recent revelations of widespread NSA surveillance, Zolnikov's bill seems almost prescient, as it came at a time where online privacy and, specifically, access to cellphone location, wasn't on everybody's minds. What's more, Zolnikov actually had far more ambitious goals than just location privacy.

"That was an afterthought in comparison with what we were trying to do," he told Mashable in an interview on Friday.

What Zolnikov wanted was to enact privacy protection laws comparable to the strict ones that exist in Germany. The first privacy bill he introduced in the House, HB 400, was a data protection bill that had the goal of giving consumers the control over their personal data. The bill gave citizens the right to consent to companies collecting their personal data to prevent them from reselling it behind consumers' backs, a business that's still somewhat conducted in secret.

This bill never got out of committee. Mainly because the business lobby, including big retailers, insurers, and bankers, didn't like it, labeling it as anti-business. Some groups even started calling him, "The Mad Russian," as Zolnikov recalled at a talk he gave along with his friend Eric Fulton at the hacking conference Def Con on Saturday.

"Protecting people's rights is bad? Well then, I guess I'll be bad,” Zolnikov said.

Zolnikov is a self described "pro-rights individual," and his ideology stems from his father's background and understanding of the reasons why he came to the United States. His father was Russian, and his father's parents moved to Iran to escape the fall of the Czar, and the rise of communism. Zolnikov's dad was born in Iran, but shortly thereafter moved to the U.S.

The young representative's understanding of his past has given him a certain loyalty to civil liberties. Though his privacy initiatives were inspired by his family's personal background, they came to fruition when his friend Fulton, who is CEO at a Montana Internet security company, suggested he took a look at online privacy issues. (Fulton also helped Zolnikov on the data protection bill that failed.)

After that bill died, Zolnikov was worn out from the defeat, but Anders Blewett, a Montana state senator and a democrat, approached him with the idea of sponsoring a privacy bill that focused solely on requiring a search warrant to obtain cellphone data. Zolnikov liked the idea immediately, and quickly found the support of other civil liberties-minded republicans, as well as more left-leaning democrats and the Montana ACLU, in an unlikely alliance.

The bill easily passed through the legislatives bodies. The State Senate voted 96-4 in favor, and the governor signed it into law. It paved the way for Maine to pass similar legislation, and courts around the country have ruled that law enforcement needs a search warrant when requesting phone companies release customers' location data. At the federal level, the issue isn't yet regulated. And in several criminal cases, the Department of Justice has argued that there's no expectation of privacy on location data, since the customer surrenders his or her data to the telephone company — the so-called "third-party" doctrine.

Despite the legislative victory, Zolnikov still remembers the failure of his first bill, which he deemed much more important than the one that passed. In fact, the cellphone privacy bill is just the start for him.

When Montana's legislature reconvenes in 2015, Zolnikov has big plans — some even unusual, like officially recognizing Bitcoin in Montana. Perhaps more realistically, he wants to prevent police to use automatic license plate readers to track cars, an issue that privacy organizations are working against in other states, and ban face recognition from surveillance cameras.

These last two technologies aren't even used in Montana, but Zolnikov wants to stay ahead of the curve, just like he did with his cellphone location tracking bill.

"What we're trying to do is be ahead of technology that's ahead of us," he said.

Image: Mashable