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It is not a violation of your civil rights for an unmarked car to follow you around and watch you. Surveillance without probable cause most certainly is a vi
by Confusion 16y ago
It is not a violation of your civil rights for an unmarked
car to follow you around and watch you.
Surveillance without probable cause most certainly is a violation of your civil rights. Following you 'everywhere' includes following you on locations where you have the right to freedom from unwarranted 'searches' under the Fourth Amendment. For instance, the Fourth Amendment has been ruled to cover the curtilage[1], which means the FBI is not allowed to continuously watch you in your garden from said unmarked car, unless they have a warrant to do so.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Curtilage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
- CWuestefeld 16y agoI don't know that I've got any legal scholarship to back me up, but that never stopped me from having an opinion. It seems to me that our rights acknowledged by the 4th and 5th Amendments boil to a right to "Freedom from Scrutiny" (and I think this is also implied by the 1st Amendment). That is, the government should pay us no mind at all, unless it's come to their attention that there's something illegal going on. I think that viewing things through this lens clears up a lot of ambiguity. It holds together as a coherent philosophy and resolves a lot of potential uncertainty, when the law is confronted with new technologies, etc.