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> It's not. In fact, it's a fairly modern invention from the Nixon era created with the expressed purpose of rationalizing a socially conservative agenda. The

by mpyne 4y ago

> It's not. In fact, it's a fairly modern invention from the Nixon era created with the expressed purpose of rationalizing a socially conservative agenda. The outcome of the Nixon era was to rein in the NSA, not expand it more. Read about the Church Committee. Moreover, the U.S. government has copied telegrams crossing the U.S.'s international borders for nearly as long as overseas telegraphy has been a thing. The NSA themselves are happy to mention that the first U.S. civilian cipher-cracking agency was setup in New York City for easy access to major telegraphy operations, see https://www.nsa.gov/History/Cryptologic-History/Historical-Events/Article-View/Article/2740622/the-black-chamber/ https://www.nsa.gov/History/Cryptologic-History/Historical-E... > It quite literally says "unreasonable search and seizures". How is this not a 4th Amendment violation? 'Seizing' is a legal term, where your property is taken and held by the government, as with some of the various oligarchs' yachts seized in the wake of Russia's attack on Ukraine. That's not to say that a wiretap would have been considered OK by the writers of the Constitution, I just don't think they thought of the possibility of intercepting communications without seizing them. Even back then there would be a concept of public records about people (think of property deeds, court records, baptismal registries, and so on). Many of those records would have been accessible to the government as a matter of course (e.g. registries maintained by a local church). So there's precedent for 'metadata' about people to be open to government without a warrant (especially if they are open to members of the public anyways). And frankly it wouldn't be until 1967 that any substantive restriction was finally put on government use of electronic communications. It wasn't even illegal for individuals to conduct wiretaps on other individuals until 1934!

kelnos 4y ago
> 'Seizing' is a legal term, where your property is taken and held by the government Doesn't that perfectly describe civil asset forfeiture? (What the parent was talking about when referring to "seizure", not the wiretap stuff in this case.) > So there's precedent for 'metadata' about people to be open to government without a warrant (especially if they are open to members of the public anyways) Phone/messaging records are not open to members of the public, though. > * And frankly it wouldn't be until 1967 that any substantive restriction was finally put on government use of electronic communications.* Is that even necessary, though? I mean, we don't need to have a law on the books that says the US President must be 35 years or older; that's in the Constitution. Just like "no unreasonable searches or seizures". Certainly law can help codify and clarify specifically what a search consists of. But I think it's pretty uncontroversial to argue that much of what the US government does vacuuming up electronic data should constitute a "search".

by mpyne 4y ago

kelnos 4y ago

> 'Seizing' is a legal term, where your property is taken and held by the government Doesn't that perfectly describe civil asset forfeiture? (What the parent was talking about when referring to "seizure", not the wiretap stuff in this case.) > So there's precedent for 'metadata' about people to be open to government without a warrant (especially if they are open to members of the public anyways) Phone/messaging records are not open to members of the public, though. > * And frankly it wouldn't be until 1967 that any substantive restriction was finally put on government use of electronic communications.* Is that even necessary, though? I mean, we don't need to have a law on the books that says the US President must be 35 years or older; that's in the Constitution. Just like "no unreasonable searches or seizures". Certainly law can help codify and clarify specifically what a search consists of. But I think it's pretty uncontroversial to argue that much of what the US government does vacuuming up electronic data should constitute a "search".