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[Couldn't you just name one "liberty" yourself?] The first amendment is one of them. If you're a banker, and the government decides to secretly access an American citizen's bank account, you can be sent to jail for 5 years if you talk about it with anyone.

So, the cherished liberty whose loss you feel so deeply is the inviolable, sacred Right To Talk About The Government Secretly Accessing A Bank Account? And this right, you believe, follows directly from the First Amendment?

By the way, bankers and bank employees are subject to a far more gigantic and restrictive list of regulations on what they can and can't say/do than just this. They can't share inside information about their clients or negotiations with clients, for example. I guess the First Amendment is dead! Either that or banking is, um, a heavily-regulated industry for quite rational reasons.

There are also many other areas in life where you can get in trouble for tipping off subjects that they are under investigation (which is, one guesses, what this regulation is effectively about). Depending on the scenario, presumably this could get you in trouble for anything from contempt of court to participating in a criminal conspiracy.

I wasn't aware, therefore, that the First Amendment was designed to allow citizens to tip off criminal suspects and thwart government investigations. I guess I'll just take your word for it then, and rest assured, you do have my deepest sympathies for having lost that precious right you once enjoyed to tell suspects that the government accessed their bank account information, knowledge you gained by virtue of having a position of responsibility in a bank. I am shedding tears over the loss of our once-great republic this represents as we speak.

P.S. Say you work in a photo-developing shop. The government approaches you with a warrant and says they need to access the negatives of such-and-such customer because they suspect him of a crime, and the negatives may prove this. You hand over the negatives, of course. They leave. (This is based on a real case, although in reality the photo employee is the one who approached the government, not vice versa.)

Question: Do you have the "right" to phone the customer and tip him off that the government did this? Is this an important First-Amendment "right" to you? Would you have thought highly of that photo clerk had he contacted Mr. DeGuzman? Would you have accepted a defense that said clerk had a "free speech right" to tell Mr. DeGuzman that the government was aware he was planning a massacre?

Or: You work for the phone company, and for this reason you learn that government has a warrant for a wiretap on their suspect, Customer X. Same question. "Hi, Customer X, I'm from the phone company and I just wanted you to know your phone is tapped".

The freedom to engage in this behavior is really an important "First Amendment right" to you?