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The problem is that the Constitution we have simply doesn't offer the protections we need. When it was written, nobody would have thought to even debate protect
by mistercow 13y ago
The problem is that the Constitution we have simply doesn't offer the protections we need. When it was written, nobody would have thought to even debate protecting against keeping a copy of every single correspondence a person made, or a log of everything a person read, even in their own homes.
It would be like today considering if we should have a protection against the government taking our DNA and making half-dinosaur hybrid clones of us to use as soldiers. It is not technically impossible, but it's very difficult to see how it would ever be practical.
Unfortunately, the amendment process we have is proving to be rather inadequate. It seems likely that if we didn't already have the Fifth Amendment, we'd never be able to get it considered as a serious issue, much less ratified. Some people would be complaining about the government torturing its own citizens all the time, and the President would be telling us that torture is "a powerful tool, and with great power comes great responsibility", and that we must limit that power so it wouldn't be abused. And at the same time, he'd be going to SCOTUS to try and get permission to do it even more (after all, how can you call it "cruel and unusual" when it's so commonplace?).
- Shivetya 13y agoIt does provide us the protections we need, the government just violates those protections until a court slaps them down. It becomes a battle of lawyers, between those who twist the words to bypass every protection and those who sit there and pull apart every twist to reveal the deficiency of the argument. The 4th is more than enough to protect the taking of our cellphones. Like any property of ours, our houses for one, it should require a warrant to search