Hacker News Reader

Comment by wbsss4412 | Hacker News Reader

While it’s not a huge jump from the 4th amendment to a generalized right to privacy, you’re wrong when you say it’s not true, the fourth amendment does not actually say anything about privacy, it is at most implied.

The fourth amendment, much like the third, was passed in response to an explicit practice that occurred during the pre revolutionary period, and sought to remedy it.

View on HN

Privacy is about maintaining an inviolable personal space, and the fourth amendment is very explicitly about limiting state violation of the individual person, their property, papers, or effects.

Papers in particular is important because it is quite literally in reference to information. To this day information has to be acquired legally in order for it to be admissable in court.

My non-lawyerly opinion believes that both the first amendment and the fourth amendment when taken together provide a decent foundation to a generalized right to privacy.

Specifically when you look at all of the cases over time defining actions as speech.

Is abortion a form of free speech? possibly!

I am totally on board with there being a right to privacy, I was only responding to the facts within the thread.

It’s a very straightforward jump from the text of the fourth amendment to a right to privacy, but at the end of the day, the amendment itself does not actually say there is a right to privacy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com