Bill Maher declares Apple CSAM tools a 'blatant constitutional breach'

The spirit of the fourth amendment is violated in several ways by our government already, dating back to the patriot act at least. Both the government and private sector have acted like it's okay to do mass spying these days because it's affordable (or profitable) and doesn't interrupt people's day-to-day activities. If we gave this issue the attention it deserved, I think public sentiment would be that it is not okay, and that we need new laws which protect people's privacy. The current information asymmetry creates fertile ground for abuse of individuals by both the state and private sector, in a way that amounts to tyranny, IMO --something the fourth amendment existed to protect us from.

There's some activism around this, including, BNLT: https://restorethe4th.com/

Do people not realise that this software is already in place across many other major tech companies and has been for years. Not that it makes it okay, but many of the negative impacts people think will come from it haven't occurred (that we have seen).

CloudFlare being one business that has had this in place since 2019, but I don't hear people freaking out about that. https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-csam-scanning-tool/

I believe that unfortunately the fourth amendment aspect, regardless of Smith and third party doctrine, will fall flat because of another line of cases, namely the contraband cases. Caballes, Jacobsen, Kyllo, all of them tend to point in the direction that if the "search" reveals only the presence of contraband, that it's not in fact a search at all, and the Supreme Court has tried as hard as it can to avoid creating such "quasi-searches". Florida v. Jardines seems to have been decided primarily on the place being "searched" (the home) and while a phone is probably an "effect" under the Fourth Amendment (Riley) it's far from an easy case and in fact may be a difficult one because they will argue that it's not a search at all.

Noted constitutional law expert Bill Maher…

This is basically blog spam coverage of this weeks show, just watch the show.