Kansas Atty. Gen. Phill Kline is under fire from critics who say his insistence that medical workers report consensual sex between minors is an invasion of adolescent privacy.

Kline has some privacy concerns of his own.

Thursday, while visiting the Journal-World, the conservative Republican denounced portions of the federal government’s USA Patriot Act, saying in some instances it clearly violates Americans’ right to privacy.

“America is safer because of (the act),” Kline said. “But I do think there are places it oversteps its bounds.”

Kline said recent court decisions had not kept pace with technology, leaving many interpretations of the Fourth Amendment’s limits on illegal searches as obsolete as last year’s computers.

“The courts say you have privacy where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy,” Kline said. “Technology is such that if we follow that interpretation, soon we will have no privacy.”

The attorney general said he saw the Patriot Act as “the first shot across the bow” in an upcoming legal battle over what is constitutionally protected and what can be limited. It’s a dialogue, he said, in which Americans must be involved.

“This is going to be a defining time in our nation,” Kline said. “These types of issues reach into all areas of the Constitution, and we’re not discussing it enough.”

But one area of privacy is getting a great deal of discussion. The Center for Reproductive Rights has filed a lawsuit on behalf of several health care workers and teachers in the Wichita area. The suit seeks an injunction to prevent Kansas law enforcement — and Kline as attorney general is the state’s top cop — from requiring health care workers to report any sexual activity discovered in individuals under the age of 16 as sexual abuse.

The suit stems from an opinion Kline issued in July interpreting existing Kansas law.

“This is a reporting requirement, not a prosecutorial requirement,” Kline said. “I don’t make the laws.”

Kline said his decision was legally valid and was not contradictory with his often vehement defenses of personal privacy.

“There are privacy protections for the way (health care workers) can release information,” Kline said. “It cannot be released to the media, for example.”

Kline said claims that the lawsuit would result in prosecuting 15-year-olds engaging in consensual sex were nonsense.

“No one can remember the last time two 15-year-olds were prosecuted for having consensual sex. … It just doesn’t happen.”

Kline said he had asked the Legislature to clarify the law.

Earlier Thursday, Kline spoke at Kansas University as part of a lecture series called “Students Learning through Leaders.”