Posted on 01/02/2010 9:17:19 AM PST by FromLori
Abstract: Your information is for sale, and the government is buying it at alarming rates. The CIA, FBI, Justice Department, Defense Department, and other government agencies are at this very moment turning to a group of companies to provide them information that these companies can gather without the restrictions that bind government intelligence agencies. The information is gathered from sources that few would believe the government could gain unfettered access to, but which, under current Fourth Amendment doctrine and statutory protections, are completely accessible.
Fourth-parties, such as ChoicePoint or LexisNexis, are private companies that aggregate data for the government, and they comprise the private security-industrial complex that arose after the attacks of September 11, 2001. They are in the business of acquiring information, not from the information’s originator (the first-party), nor from the information’s anticipated recipient (the second-party), but from the unavoidable digital intermediaries that transmit and store the information (third-parties). These fourth-party companies act with impunity as they gather information that the government wants but would be unable to collect on its own due to Fourth Amendment or statutory prohibitions. This paper argues that when fourth-parties disclose to law enforcement information generated as a result of searches that would be violations had the government conducted the searches itself, those fourth-parties’ actions should be considered searches by agents of the government, and the data should retain privacy protections.
(Excerpt) Read more at papers.ssrn.com ...
ping
For reference: the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Just go to an airport and try to refuse a search without a warrant and see what the JBTs do.
I did use the 4th Amendment successfully when entering a county building for Jury Duty when the mental midget JBT tried to make me send my belonging through the scanner. I asked to see the warrant. He was like a deer in the headlights. He eventually let me pass without his illegal search.
We have the “boy in chief” who thinks he is smart enough to claim the founding fathers created a flawed document. Who the hell does this non-citzen think he is? His tribal knowledge would not make a pimple on the behinds of our founding fathers.
Considering how this administration's been nationalizing business, how long before Choicepoint and LexisNexis are just divisions of the Justice Department?
The old communist rulers must be spinning in their graves out of justified jealousy over the weapons in the hands of today's dictators that might have extended the Soviet Union for much longer than a short 70 or so years.
Ronald Reagan was prophetic...A thousand years of darkness
If we, as a Nation, had only paid attention then.....Now it is too late and we are paying the price....Our great-great-great grandchildren and beyond will pay an even heavier price...
If freedom ever does returns, you can be sure that our generation and the generation prior to ours will be looked on as pure evil for having allowed the wanton destruction of mankind's greatest experiment in individual freedom and liberty...
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