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Is the Fourth Amendment Now Illegal?

8 pointsby darklighter3almost 12 years ago

1 comment

mpynealmost 12 years ago
No, but it is apparently misunderstood.<p>In the meantime the Fifth Amendment already should protect you against being compelled to incriminate yourself.<p>For the rest, for better or worse it&#x27;s always been a government loophole to wait for you to tell a third-party something and <i>then</i> grab it. We used to have a government office that would read all (ALL) Western Union telegrams going abroad and coming within, for example.<p>Sometimes the government self-limits it&#x27;s ability to do this (e.g. wiretapping phones... we&#x27;ve gone from days where phone conversations were conducted on a &quot;party line&quot; where all could listen it, to where no one may legally tap a phone line and even the government must obtain a warrant or court order).<p>The problem with self-limiting is that such limits can be just as easily undone (e.g. Patriot Act).<p>So perhaps a specific Amendment regarding privacy itself is warranted, because the Fourth Amendment doesn&#x27;t speak to that itself, unless we wait for another activist Supreme Court decision ;)<p>But even in that case, I just don&#x27;t see the NSA completely going out of the game as I don&#x27;t think Americans will subject themselves to a &quot;no foreign communications wiretaps&quot; law, as that is something even the Germans seem to explicitly permit in their legal code.