At 01:49 PM 04/01/2000 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
>Your (and the SC) entire argument rests on the acceptance of 'privacy'.
>There is none in the 4th. The 4th does NOT address ANY expectations of the
>citizen, with respect to privacy or otherwise. It EXPLICITELY defines what
>must occur for an agent of the federal government to obtain evidence on an
individual.
>A police officer who on a whim begins to search the Internet for specific
>evidence of criminal acts is acting against the 4th, both in spirit and word.
No it does not - and you got quote the very section that says so.
Police can get evidence all sorts of ways - people bringing them complaints,
loitering on street corners watching for altercations,
sitting around donut shops waiting for stool pigeons, whatever.
What the plain words you quoted say are only limit what they need to do
if they want to go search your persons, houses, papers, and effects,
and define what's procedurally "reasonable" - it requires a certain amount
of solid probable cause and a warrant from a judge before they do that.
The World Wide Web is a bunch of billboards rented out by the street
or painted on the side of your barn so that everybody in the world
can see them. The only thing a search engine does is helps cops deal with
"let's see - which of the 30 million billboards on ladybirdjohnsonhighway.com
looks like something we ought to look into further?" - it doesn't
break into your house or see anything you haven't put out in plain view
or even break into your office or demand that all the stores
you might have shopped in produce any receipts with initials "J.C." on them.
Similarly, the chat room snooping business is no different from
out-of-uniform cops hanging out in biker bars and Starbucks coffeeshops
listening for conversations about meth dealing or insider trading.
Either you recognize their bad attempts at slang and cop-shaped suits
and notice the bulges in their socks or you don't,
but as long as they pay their cover charges or look at the
advertising like everybody else, it's not a Constitutional problem.
Hangin' out at Bizarro's Bar expecting a fight to break out
'cause it's Saturday night is Constitutionally just fine,
and hangin' out at the Motley Fool expecting trouble to break out
'cause it's almost Triple Witching Hour is just fine too.
If they insist that sites let them in free where they're not wanted,
or keep and produce logs of all their other customers,
*that* can be a real Constitutional problem.
On the other hand, if they keep trying to entrap people,
asking where to get recipes for b**bs on the net
or who can introduce them to 3L33T St0X Haxqorz & --0Pti0nz Manipul8terz,
that gets real annoying, real fast :-)
> Amendment IV
>
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
> and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
> violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
> supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
> place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
>This is the same kind of wrong-headed spin-doctorism reasoning with
>respect to the 1st Amendment and yelling 'Fire' in a theatre. It isn't a
>question of protecting the patrons (i.e. civil order), there are already
>laws on the books that make inciting a riot a crime. No, the reasoning is
>to create a strawman that shifts the focus on discussion (in the 4th's
>case this is the non-existant 'privacy' standard) to a venue where the
>argument will hold up. And hope like hell nobody notices.
This paragraph I mostly agree with, at least if you're talking about
the Feds' spin-doctorism.
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
