> the 4th Amendment clearly talks about searches and seizures
Not to nitpick, but how exactly is making a copy of something a seizure?
Not to nitpick, but how exactly is making a copy of something a seizure?
"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."
A plain English interpretation would seem to make the NSA slurping illegal, but a legal interpretation could be completely different.
(1) 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 (2) 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.
(1) being the protection, and (2) mentioning the loophole of warrants and protections on that as well. Searching digital information without a warrant violates (1). The legal way to do it is via warrants, and limitations on warrants are prescribed in (2).
Yes, the passing of "information" is not new. But I believe the intercepting of mail, copying and then letting the original letter through to its destination without a warrant is illegal. (Isn't it?)
I'm no scholar of Revolutionary era America, but I'm pretty sure that if shit of that sort were going down, it would have gotten specific mention in the Declaration.
If you associate with someone that runs afoul of the law, why is it unreasonable to consider you? You seem to think the only possible outcome of actually examining your shit is incrimination. It cuts both ways, you know. You could be ruled out.
"The right of the people to be secure in their [...] papers [...] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"
Why should the amendment protect papers if it is only the physical page that is protected and not the actual information?
It is more of a question of what is reasonable -- does a person know who has access to their information? Do they put their information out there with the understanding that it isn't private? The very basic idea here is that people should know what rights and privacies they have, and violating the conditions where they can reasonably expect privacy should be illegal.
For example, taking a picture of the Washington Monument isn't remotely anything that comes to mind when I consider what "seizing the Washington Monument" would entail.
But it's kind of pedantic to argue over a single word.
The pertinent question is 'Do the views espoused by the Constitution as a whole (and subsequent case law) offer an opinion on the rightness of mass copying-without-exclusive access?'
Which is pretty thorny indeed. IANAL, but from what I've read it seems as though the Supreme Court is steadily trending more towards supporting an inherent right to privacy as a buttress against decisions that would otherwise feel wrong.
They first have to capture the data before copying. Fits the definition, in my opinion
It's not like they posted a man on a hill to watch the traffic go by (or a pair of blimps in MD...) They required AT&T's coöperation to proceed here. Like putting a checkpoint on the road.
You could get into the old argument about IP theft about say copying vs stealing a movie. But even then, creating the concept of IP monopoly was explicitly granted by the Constitution, it doesn't arise from the 4th Amendment. If copying something is a "seizure" then why does the copyright clause even exist?
My interpretation of "search and seizure" is the situation that: you keep and possess private stuff that you secure at a location that you control, the government shows up at your place, takes all of your stuff back to their warehouse to look through at their leisure. The government has your papers and you no longer do.
That seems fundamentally and qualitatively different from what's happening when you choose to use someone else's telecommunications equipment. Now, instead of hanging on to your private secrets, you've decided to go ahead and scroll them onto postcards and toss them into the mail (for safe keeping? really?). And then after sending them out into the World, you're shocked that your secrets somehow got out of your bag! It defies common sense.
Edit: I guess what I'm saying is, if you write something on a postcard and drop it in the mail, that behavior clearly indicates that you do not consider the information you put on the postcard to be private.
When people are using the internet, in some contexts there is a certain expectation of privacy, and in others, there is none. If I upload pictures to a public Facebook profile or a hosting website (such as imgur), I certainly don't expect that to be private. It's there and available for everyone to see/observe/collect/record/download/analyze/whatever. However, if I connect to a search provider using HTTPS, and the search provider vehemently claims they do not hand my data over to the government, I certainly don't expect the said provider to hand my data over to the government, or the government to try to subvert and crack the encryption between me and the website.
I think it's high time people stop trying to get what's unfair and immoral by trying to subvert the language. While you may eventually get what you want, it is corrupt and evil. No amount of legal "reinterpreting" changes that.