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When you send a letter it does not belong to the post office while in transit. Why are bits on a hard drive any different?

bb88 7y ago
Can you point an originalist to the constitutional clause or amendment that grants such a right?
- Rooster61 7y ago
  It probably isn't in the Constitution, but I would not be surprised if there was legal precedent for such a thing.
  - bb88 7y ago
    That's the problem with an originalist, settled law isn't necessarily settled. Previous court decisions may have been decided incorrectly.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  No clause or amendment grants any right. Rights are explicitly innate to the individual and not granted by or limited to the constitution.
  - bb88 7y ago
    An originalist would point out that the constitution does not grant rights, but merely limits the laws and actions that government can take. Despite what the constitution says, human rights are not self evident, they must in fact be legalized.
    - MereInterest 7y ago
      This hypothetical originalist would have an interesting time dealing with the ninth amendment, which explicitly states that the Bill of Rights is not a full listing of all human rights. "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
txcwpalpha 7y ago
Inspectors can and do inspect the contents many types of mail, though, so I'm not sure this example is a good one for those championing privacy... To elaborate: when using the US Postal Service, only domestic "First Class Mail" and "Priority Mail" (these are different and distinct from standard mail) is protected and requires a probable cause warrant to open and inspect. Other types of mail, as well as all packages shipped through private companies like UPS and FedEx, do not require warrants and can be opened and inspected whenever the post office or UPS/FedEx feel like it. There isn't an expectation of privacy for these packages, and certainly no constitutional protection of it.
- 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  fuzz4lyfe > When you send a letter it does not belong to the post office while in transit txcwpalpha > Inspectors can and do inspect the contents... of mail txcwpalpha > ...for packages There's a scarecrow argument if I've ever seen one. Someone says A is 1. You say A isn't 1 because AB is 2. Sneaky. There certainly is an expectation of privacy in my mail CORRESPONDENCE (which is what this whole thing is about... communication, not package sending). Why shouldn't there be for my e mail correspondence?
  - txcwpalpha 7y ago
    I did not say that A isn't 1. In fact, in my comment I specifically acknowledge that A is 1 (some types of mail are protected by the 4th amendment). Please do not try to construct a straw man. The point is that there is already a determination that not all items sent through mail services have an expectation of privacy. If we're drawing a parallel between physical mail and e-mail, this lends to the belief that such a determination could also be made for items sent through electronic media, especially items sent through electronic media that is owned by private companies (ISPs), similar to how private shipping companies do not provide 4th amendment protection. >There certainly is an expectation of privacy in my mail CORRESPONDENCE Not all mail correspondence, which is the point. If you send a letter through USPS standard mail, there is no expectation of privacy. If you send a document through UPS, there is no expectation of privacy. Also, you're getting hung up on the usage of the words "package" vs "correspondence" vs "mail" vs "letter". This is an unnecessary distinction. A letter is just a "package" that contains paper with information on it. The law doesn't see a difference. In my original comment, you should read the words package/letter/mail/correspondence interchangeably.
imglorp 7y ago
They are different because of aggregation: the hundreds of signals an organization has from your activities are combined into thousands of derived signals, which you probably would not have offered the organization freely. Just for example, by combining several data points, Skynet can infer that those people are acquainted and add that fact to the corpus about you both. You would never give a retailer a full dump of everyone in your address book, but it's pretty much given they know it.
nickles 7y ago
> When you send a letter it does not belong to the post office while in transit. You only have an expectation of privacy of the contents of the letter. You have no such expectation of anything on the envelope itself (e.g. sender/receiver address). The government contends that it only collects analogous metadata in transit, not the contents of the communication itself (although this is debatable).

bb88 7y ago

Can you point an originalist to the constitutional clause or amendment that grants such a right?

Rooster61 7y ago
It probably isn't in the Constitution, but I would not be surprised if there was legal precedent for such a thing.
- bb88 7y ago
  That's the problem with an originalist, settled law isn't necessarily settled. Previous court decisions may have been decided incorrectly.
homonculus1 7y ago
No clause or amendment grants any right. Rights are explicitly innate to the individual and not granted by or limited to the constitution.
- bb88 7y ago
  An originalist would point out that the constitution does not grant rights, but merely limits the laws and actions that government can take. Despite what the constitution says, human rights are not self evident, they must in fact be legalized.
  - MereInterest 7y ago
    This hypothetical originalist would have an interesting time dealing with the ninth amendment, which explicitly states that the Bill of Rights is not a full listing of all human rights. "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

txcwpalpha 7y ago

Inspectors can and do inspect the contents many types of mail, though, so I'm not sure this example is a good one for those championing privacy... To elaborate: when using the US Postal Service, only domestic "First Class Mail" and "Priority Mail" (these are different and distinct from standard mail) is protected and requires a probable cause warrant to open and inspect. Other types of mail, as well as all packages shipped through private companies like UPS and FedEx, do not require warrants and can be opened and inspected whenever the post office or UPS/FedEx feel like it. There isn't an expectation of privacy for these packages, and certainly no constitutional protection of it.

4ntonius8lock 7y ago
fuzz4lyfe > When you send a letter it does not belong to the post office while in transit txcwpalpha > Inspectors can and do inspect the contents... of mail txcwpalpha > ...for packages There's a scarecrow argument if I've ever seen one. Someone says A is 1. You say A isn't 1 because AB is 2. Sneaky. There certainly is an expectation of privacy in my mail CORRESPONDENCE (which is what this whole thing is about... communication, not package sending). Why shouldn't there be for my e mail correspondence?
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  I did not say that A isn't 1. In fact, in my comment I specifically acknowledge that A is 1 (some types of mail are protected by the 4th amendment). Please do not try to construct a straw man. The point is that there is already a determination that not all items sent through mail services have an expectation of privacy. If we're drawing a parallel between physical mail and e-mail, this lends to the belief that such a determination could also be made for items sent through electronic media, especially items sent through electronic media that is owned by private companies (ISPs), similar to how private shipping companies do not provide 4th amendment protection. >There certainly is an expectation of privacy in my mail CORRESPONDENCE Not all mail correspondence, which is the point. If you send a letter through USPS standard mail, there is no expectation of privacy. If you send a document through UPS, there is no expectation of privacy. Also, you're getting hung up on the usage of the words "package" vs "correspondence" vs "mail" vs "letter". This is an unnecessary distinction. A letter is just a "package" that contains paper with information on it. The law doesn't see a difference. In my original comment, you should read the words package/letter/mail/correspondence interchangeably.

imglorp 7y ago

They are different because of aggregation: the hundreds of signals an organization has from your activities are combined into thousands of derived signals, which you probably would not have offered the organization freely. Just for example, by combining several data points, Skynet can infer that those people are acquainted and add that fact to the corpus about you both. You would never give a retailer a full dump of everyone in your address book, but it's pretty much given they know it.

nickles 7y ago

> When you send a letter it does not belong to the post office while in transit. You only have an expectation of privacy of the contents of the letter. You have no such expectation of anything on the envelope itself (e.g. sender/receiver address). The government contends that it only collects analogous metadata in transit, not the contents of the communication itself (although this is debatable).