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Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

> they are protected in your possession. If you turn over all your papers to a third-party, though, that changes things

I believe that interpretation is standard for U.S. courts. However, it's not in the wording itself.

(Courts of course, must interpret the law beyond the wording; I fully support that. The law is not an algorithm, and also someone must apply the law to individual situations. Otherwise the First Amendment, for example, would protect slander, threats, shouting fire in a crowded theater, etc.)

I don't like that particular interpretation. It implies the 4th Amendment applies only in your windowless basement, with no communication in or out. That isn't realistic, and is especially unrealistic in the age of the Internet.

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>Otherwise the First Amendment, for example, would protect ... shouting fire in a crowded theater,

But that is protected speech, and the SCOTUS case it refers to was overturned long ago because it set a terrible precedent. Holmes used that analogy to support the prosecution and conviction of Charles Schenck under the Espionage Act for writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft during World War I.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/foreign-policy-exception-first-ame...

I don't know about that case, but if you falsely shout "fire" in a crowded, dark theater, I'm pretty sure you will be breaking the law. It probably would be breaking the law if you did it in a well-lit conference hall. (Whether you are arrested or just thrown out probably depends on if anyone gets hurt, physically or financially.)

[Brandenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio) is the case you want to look at. The court held that, to be unprotected “incitement,” speech must meet three requirements. The speaker must intend to cause violence. The violence must be the likely result of the speech. And the violence must be imminent. So, if equivalent circumstances are established, yes, the shouter might well be in trouble.

Before you quote the "fire in a theater" precedent again, please go and look up [Schenck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States) as well, since that's the origin of the quote, and because it's apparent that there is very little distance between "speech that will cause immediate harm to people isn't protected" and "speech criticizing wars isn't protected when we're at war" when you're a SCOTUS chief justice.

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