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I can't speak for anyone else, but I think those "reasonable judicial interpretations" represent a gutting of the 4th amendment. The writers specified "persons

I can't speak for anyone else, but I think those "reasonable judicial interpretations" represent a gutting of the 4th amendment. The writers specified "persons, houses, papers, and effects" as protected - in other words, everything they could think of in their day. For every one of those things, they said that the government needed probable cause and a warrant. Today, our persons nearly always carry trackable devices. Our houses are where we search the web and video chat with loved ones. Our papers and effects are files, which we back up over the cloud. Most conversations we have are digital. It is impossible to function in modern society without giving lots of data to third parties as a side effect. All of this is tracked, recorded, stored and analyzed without cause or warrants. If it's claimed that the 4th amendment covers the grocery list in my pocket, but none of the my truly sensitive data, then I say it's a fat lot of good. With interpretations like those, why bother having laws at all?

rayiner 12y ago
> I can't speak for anyone else, but I think those "reasonable judicial interpretations" represent a gutting of the 4th amendment. In 1789: a) The government could have subpoenaed your banking records without a warrant. 1789 wasn't prehistory--the founders were lawyers and businessmen, and would have had an understanding of sensitive commercial, accounting, and legal records being held by third parties. b) The First Congress passed a law enabling warrantless customs searches at the border. The founders perceived the government's right to control what crossed the border outweighed anyone's privacy interests. > With interpretations like those, why bother having laws at all? To the contrary. Textual interpretations of law protect you. They're predictable and hard to argue with. It's results-oriented interpretations that are dangerous, because there's no guarantee that the decision maker and you are going to have the same understanding of which results are important.
- nathan_long 12y ago
  Thank you for making an interesting point with concrete examples. This was very informative.

rayiner 12y ago

> I can't speak for anyone else, but I think those "reasonable judicial interpretations" represent a gutting of the 4th amendment. In 1789: a) The government could have subpoenaed your banking records without a warrant. 1789 wasn't prehistory--the founders were lawyers and businessmen, and would have had an understanding of sensitive commercial, accounting, and legal records being held by third parties. b) The First Congress passed a law enabling warrantless customs searches at the border. The founders perceived the government's right to control what crossed the border outweighed anyone's privacy interests. > With interpretations like those, why bother having laws at all? To the contrary. Textual interpretations of law protect you. They're predictable and hard to argue with. It's results-oriented interpretations that are dangerous, because there's no guarantee that the decision maker and you are going to have the same understanding of which results are important.

nathan_long 12y ago
Thank you for making an interesting point with concrete examples. This was very informative.