Posted on 12/26/2016 11:55:47 AM PST by Lorianne
Reuters has an interesting piece looking at how many experts are concerned that mass surveillance efforts by the federal government are making a mockery of the 4th Amendment. The focus of the article is on the scan of all Yahoo email that was revealed back in October, but it certainly touches on other programs as well. The concern is easily summarized by Orin Kerr: "A lot of it is unrecognizable from a Fourth Amendment perspective," said Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and Georgetown University Law School expert on surveillance. "It's not where the traditional Fourth Amendment law is." But, have no fear, the General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Robert Litt, says there's a reason for that, and it's all technology's fault. We've covered Litt and his somewhat nutty views on the 4th Amendment and surveillance in the past, so the following isn't new. But Litt's main defense of basically all of the NSA's various abuses and mocking of the 4th Amendment is "it's technology's fault." He's quoted twice in the article, and both times, it's all about the tech. First up, an argument that the traditional 4th Amendment doesn't apply, because technology:
(Excerpt) Read more at techdirt.com ...
Fine. I will play along. Then use the same technology to reveal to every American what communications of theirs have been gathered, what surveillance has been performed against those communications and a complete history of who has accessed it and why.
This is trivial by comparison. If the 4th amendment is so outdated, tell every American what private communications you have taken for use. If you won’t do this, then quit pretending you are doing us any favors. Get a warrant
These guys think that they are patriots.
They are nothing of the sort.
I say they still can't. Unlike the USPS, the internet is designed to do whatever it takes to get that email from Point A to Point B. A USPS truck in North Dakota would never take a detour through Canada, but the internet might move your email through a server in Canada, for example, whether your email provider has a server there or not.
I offer Canada as a placeholder for any of a number of possible foreign countries, not as a single exception that would need to be addressed.
This dragnet thinking follows from Smith vs. Maryland, a bad decision in itself which has been egregiously misused and overused as precedent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland
Deserves a bump and repeating. And a huge, This is one of the primary reasons we need the 4th amendment to be protected in the first place.
What I fear is that the separation between Press and government as well as social media and government has been irreparably damaged. Neither was meant to be a wing of the state. If we can’t fix that, peaceful transfer of power is in jeopardy.
They wish.
Exactly how I feel about it.
but the same could be said for those cities where prosecutors refuse to prosecute theft under 1k. The law did not change.
But until conservatives start pushing back in court, businesses pushing back and suing, until we decide to start using the law to our advantage win/lose things will not get better, will not return to reasonableness.
Lets hear from a techie Freeper on this - can I avoid government surveillance with encryption?
the 4th Amendment
Constitution of the United States, via Populist America et al | The Framers
Posted on 3/30/2009, 8:33:28 PM by SunkenCiv
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2218521/posts
In recent years, the Fourth Amendment's applicability in electronic searches and seizures has received much attention from the courts. With the advent of the internet and increased popularity of computers, there has been an increasing amount of crime occurring electronically. Consequently, evidence of such crime can often be found on computers, hard drives, or other electronic devices. The Fourth Amendment applies to the search and seizure of electronic devices.
Many electronic search cases involve whether law enforcement can search a company-owned computer that an employee uses to conduct business. Although the case law is split, the majority holds that employees do not have a legitimate expectation of privacy with regard to information stored on a company-owned computer. In the 2010 case of City of Ontario v. Quon (08-1332), the Supreme Court extended this lack of an expectation of privacy to text messages sent and received on an employer-owned pager.
Lately, electronic surveillance and wiretapping has also caused a significant amount of Fourth Amendment litigation.
Fourth Amendment | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute (cornell.edu)
The BIGGER question:
...can I avoid government surveillance ...
The answer: No.
"The telescreen recieved and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. |
Ecclesiastes 10:20
Do not curse the king even in your thoughts;
and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber:
for a bird of the air shall carry thy voice,
and that which has wings shall report thy speech.
This thread has risen from the dead!
Posted on 12/26/2016, 2:55:47 PM by Lorianne
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