4 ms·

And that is why the fourth amendment reads: >The right of the people to be secure in their houses against unreasonable searches, shall not be violated, and no

And that is why the fourth amendment reads: >The right of the people to be secure in their houses against unreasonable searches, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the house to be searched. Don't get me wrong. I get the pedantry. It just has a habit of completely missing the point.

mpyne 13y ago
That's not the Fourth Amendment in my Constitution. The Framers were nowhere near stupid enough to use as specific a term as "house".
- ctidd 13y ago
  That's exactly the point aspensmonster was making by misquoting the amendment to make light of the rayiner's comment.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Well aspenmonster's doing a poor job at it then. rayiner could be exactly right in his description of the specific fear that the Framers had which lead to them including that general protection into the Bill of Rights. In fact I would be surprised if rayiner wasn't correct on that there was a specific instance. And rayiner never tried to claim the 4th Amendment says something different other than its actual text either. He simply explained why the actual text of the 4th Amendment was thought to be required, which can be helpful in court deliberations when trying to apply a vague law to a given case.
    - ctidd 13y ago
      You can use "why" to question the context in which the amendment was created, and I even agree with you about that context, but "why" is a broader term, which can be thought, in these circumstances, to include also the intent of the amendment -- why was the amendment created if not to prohibit precisely that which it prohibits? In short, this is a miscommunication based on a word's definition.
    - aspensmonster 13y ago
      Well, I'm clearly not doing so poorly that no one understands what I'm getting at. I was calling out a tendency towards detracting pedantry that seems quite common amongst the "Karma Superstars" of Hacker News. Rayiner's interjection that the "actual" incitement to the penning of the fourth amendment was, specifically, the intrusion of the British into citizens' homes may be correct. If I understand correctly, he's (she's?) a lawyer by profession, so there's a good chance it is. It's just irrelevant. It's technically true and completely beside the point that pvnick was making about the spirit of the law, something that rayiner seems to have a difficult grasp on given his (her?) incessant need to describe in condescending tone and dismissive language that "actually," "technically," whatever the person he's (she's?) responding to has said is, under statute or precedent or treaty or scholarly interpretation, incorrect. It's a frustrating way of avoiding responding to a person's clear and obvious point by instead nitpicking about this statute, or that precedent, or treaty X, while giving off the false impression that something relevant to the discussion at hand has been said. And the Hacker News community seems to gobble it up. Rayiner doesn't need to spell out a claim in plain words and sentences for the tone of his message to convey one, though his choice of sentences often does. Hell, he's given a perfect example of what I'm talking about in a reply posted as I write this that I can only assume was mistakenly attached to my post rather than pvnick's. Everything he says about what the founders intended in the 1700s, and what the history of the law is, and why the original drafter specifically decided to include it in the Bill of Rights, may be 100 percent accurate. It just ignores the fact that laws are given meaning and power by people, and their meaning and power as seen by those people changes over time. To suggest that the fourth amendment "isn't about information" and that "it's protections don't attach to information and follow it around" is something that very clearly undermines what nearly every person in this democratic republic holds to be the purpose and power of the fourth amendment. My right to be secure in my effects doesn't end just because I place them on a server in a datacenter rather than a computer in my home, and it is absolutely disingenuous to suggest that the spirit of the law has not been violated by anyone in the legal profession that holds to that interpretation. It doesn't matter if a legal scholar adheres to a 20th century interpretation of a 19th century law that is absolutely bogus in the 21st century, because the point that myself or pvnick or any other user makes about the spirit of a law has nothing to do with the scholarly legal interpretation; it has to do with the actual point: that the government never has free reign over my effects, regardless of whether I keep them locked up, in a safe, in a home that I own, on land that I own, and never ever ever do anything with them; or whether I place them, unencrypted, on a server that I do not own, in a data center that I do not own. My emails do not become "unprotected communication" after 180 days. They do not become "unprotected communication" after 365 days. They do not become "unprotected communication" after five years. They _never_ become "unprotected communication" based on _any_ arbitrary time limit. No matter what any statute or precedent or treaty says to the contrary.
- rayiner 13y ago
  They do say "houses". The fact that they use such a specific term is insight into what worries motivated them.
rayiner 13y ago
The 4th amendment protects: "persons, houses, papers, and effects." Note that it doesn't say "correspondence" or "communication" or even "letters" though those things surely existed at the time. The 4th amendment isn't about information. It's protections don't attach to information and follow it around. It's also not about privacy. It's about protecting private, personal spaces ("house" and "person") and things found in those spaces ("papers" and "effects"). More to the point, you said: "This is exactly the reason the fourth amendment was written. Not to learn the secret recipe behind your grandma's cookies. But because it's extremely tempting for those in power to want to abuse their power to avoid being accountable to the public for their actions." That's not why the 4th amendment was written. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writ_of_assistance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writ_of_assistance. The 4th amendment was a response to the British practice of issuing general warrants for customs purposes that were freely transferable. As a result, whoever held the writs could search anyone at any time and were not liable for damages caused as a result of these searches. The purpose of the warrant requirement, thus, was not holding people accountable to the public, but preventing judges from blanket delegations of powers to sheriffs. The purpose was to put the judiciary back in the loop instead of giving the power to one person. The 4th amendment says nothing about publicizing warrants or disclosing them to the public or giving the target of the search notice of the search. One would think that if the purpose of the 4th amendment was, as you say, to publicize what was being searched so the public could scrutinize such searches, there would be some sort of requirement of notice or making the documents public.
- pyre 13y ago
  | The 4th amendment protects: "persons, houses, | papers, and effects." | Note that it doesn't say "correspondence" or | "communication" or even "letters" though those | things surely existed at the time. I presume that "letters" at the time would be covered by "papers."
  - btilly 13y ago
    You may presume it, but I am logically convinced. The only kinds of common correspondence in use at the time which were capable of being seized fall under papers (eg letters) and effects (including personal gifts). They are therefore protected.

mpyne 13y ago

That's not the Fourth Amendment in my Constitution. The Framers were nowhere near stupid enough to use as specific a term as "house".

ctidd 13y ago
That's exactly the point aspensmonster was making by misquoting the amendment to make light of the rayiner's comment.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Well aspenmonster's doing a poor job at it then. rayiner could be exactly right in his description of the specific fear that the Framers had which lead to them including that general protection into the Bill of Rights. In fact I would be surprised if rayiner wasn't correct on that there was a specific instance. And rayiner never tried to claim the 4th Amendment says something different other than its actual text either. He simply explained why the actual text of the 4th Amendment was thought to be required, which can be helpful in court deliberations when trying to apply a vague law to a given case.
  - ctidd 13y ago
    You can use "why" to question the context in which the amendment was created, and I even agree with you about that context, but "why" is a broader term, which can be thought, in these circumstances, to include also the intent of the amendment -- why was the amendment created if not to prohibit precisely that which it prohibits? In short, this is a miscommunication based on a word's definition.
  - aspensmonster 13y ago
    Well, I'm clearly not doing so poorly that no one understands what I'm getting at. I was calling out a tendency towards detracting pedantry that seems quite common amongst the "Karma Superstars" of Hacker News. Rayiner's interjection that the "actual" incitement to the penning of the fourth amendment was, specifically, the intrusion of the British into citizens' homes may be correct. If I understand correctly, he's (she's?) a lawyer by profession, so there's a good chance it is. It's just irrelevant. It's technically true and completely beside the point that pvnick was making about the spirit of the law, something that rayiner seems to have a difficult grasp on given his (her?) incessant need to describe in condescending tone and dismissive language that "actually," "technically," whatever the person he's (she's?) responding to has said is, under statute or precedent or treaty or scholarly interpretation, incorrect. It's a frustrating way of avoiding responding to a person's clear and obvious point by instead nitpicking about this statute, or that precedent, or treaty X, while giving off the false impression that something relevant to the discussion at hand has been said. And the Hacker News community seems to gobble it up. Rayiner doesn't need to spell out a claim in plain words and sentences for the tone of his message to convey one, though his choice of sentences often does. Hell, he's given a perfect example of what I'm talking about in a reply posted as I write this that I can only assume was mistakenly attached to my post rather than pvnick's. Everything he says about what the founders intended in the 1700s, and what the history of the law is, and why the original drafter specifically decided to include it in the Bill of Rights, may be 100 percent accurate. It just ignores the fact that laws are given meaning and power by people, and their meaning and power as seen by those people changes over time. To suggest that the fourth amendment "isn't about information" and that "it's protections don't attach to information and follow it around" is something that very clearly undermines what nearly every person in this democratic republic holds to be the purpose and power of the fourth amendment. My right to be secure in my effects doesn't end just because I place them on a server in a datacenter rather than a computer in my home, and it is absolutely disingenuous to suggest that the spirit of the law has not been violated by anyone in the legal profession that holds to that interpretation. It doesn't matter if a legal scholar adheres to a 20th century interpretation of a 19th century law that is absolutely bogus in the 21st century, because the point that myself or pvnick or any other user makes about the spirit of a law has nothing to do with the scholarly legal interpretation; it has to do with the actual point: that the government never has free reign over my effects, regardless of whether I keep them locked up, in a safe, in a home that I own, on land that I own, and never ever ever do anything with them; or whether I place them, unencrypted, on a server that I do not own, in a data center that I do not own. My emails do not become "unprotected communication" after 180 days. They do not become "unprotected communication" after 365 days. They do not become "unprotected communication" after five years. They _never_ become "unprotected communication" based on _any_ arbitrary time limit. No matter what any statute or precedent or treaty says to the contrary.
rayiner 13y ago
They do say "houses". The fact that they use such a specific term is insight into what worries motivated them.

rayiner 13y ago

The 4th amendment protects: "persons, houses, papers, and effects." Note that it doesn't say "correspondence" or "communication" or even "letters" though those things surely existed at the time. The 4th amendment isn't about information. It's protections don't attach to information and follow it around. It's also not about privacy. It's about protecting private, personal spaces ("house" and "person") and things found in those spaces ("papers" and "effects"). More to the point, you said: "This is exactly the reason the fourth amendment was written. Not to learn the secret recipe behind your grandma's cookies. But because it's extremely tempting for those in power to want to abuse their power to avoid being accountable to the public for their actions." That's not why the 4th amendment was written. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writ_of_assistance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writ_of_assistance. The 4th amendment was a response to the British practice of issuing general warrants for customs purposes that were freely transferable. As a result, whoever held the writs could search anyone at any time and were not liable for damages caused as a result of these searches. The purpose of the warrant requirement, thus, was not holding people accountable to the public, but preventing judges from blanket delegations of powers to sheriffs. The purpose was to put the judiciary back in the loop instead of giving the power to one person. The 4th amendment says nothing about publicizing warrants or disclosing them to the public or giving the target of the search notice of the search. One would think that if the purpose of the 4th amendment was, as you say, to publicize what was being searched so the public could scrutinize such searches, there would be some sort of requirement of notice or making the documents public.

pyre 13y ago
| The 4th amendment protects: "persons, houses, | papers, and effects." | Note that it doesn't say "correspondence" or | "communication" or even "letters" though those | things surely existed at the time. I presume that "letters" at the time would be covered by "papers."
- btilly 13y ago
  You may presume it, but I am logically convinced. The only kinds of common correspondence in use at the time which were capable of being seized fall under papers (eg letters) and effects (including personal gifts). They are therefore protected.