
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the age of surveillance - lermontov
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/spies/open-inspection
======
ck2
Really hate to sound like a constitutional fundamentalist but we already have
protections about this, at least in the USA, it's just completely unenforced.

Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. The forethought against
overbearing government has ALWAYS been there.

Except there's been a massive end-run around "unreasonable". I mean every
single hour of every single day, someone's car is being ransacked by the
police, despite them not being under arrest.

If they can do that and get away with it, then nothing else is safe or sacred.

~~~
unethical_ban
So while I appreciate some peoples' notions of "living Constitution", this is
why I tend toward "originalist" readings of the document.

Also, read up on the Katz test for questions on the 4th amendment. tl;dr it's
important that society as a whole places high value on privacy, or else the
SCOTUS might not protect it so much.

~~~
rayiner
The thing is, the originalist take on the 4th amendment is pretty much that it
prohibits the government from doing, without a warrant, what would be trespass
if done by a private actor. All of the stuff people want to add, like
expectation of privacy in things out in the hands of third parties, or mosaic
theory, are living constitution embellishments.

The very concept of "privacy" is a living constitution idea. The constitution
doesn't use the word. The 4th amendment doesn't talk about the "right to
privacy" the way the 1st talks about "freedom of speech." It talks about
searches and seizures of enumerated (tangible) things. It's not like the
framers didn't conceive of information or records held by third parties. They
were lawyers and bankers and merchants--they could easily conceive that the
police might ask a shipper for records of a merchant's shipments or an
accountant for financial records.

~~~
unethical_ban
It seems very straightforward to draw a right to be secure in one's papers and
property from general warrants, and pretty easily extend that to data on one's
phone or computer for the same kind of data. The 4th wasn't written to protect
your sheets of paper. It was written to protect your data and your private
matters from authorities on a witch hunt.

~~~
rayiner
If we're going by the text alone, the 4th amendment protects your _property_
from authorities on a witch hunt: "persons, houses, papers, and effects." All
are all property, and can be the subject of a trespass action (trespass to the
person, trespass to land, trespass to chattel) when someone uses those things
inconsistently with your property right. The 4th amendment doesn't say
anything about "private matters" (and the motivating example of the 4th
amendment was searches for contraband, not intrusion into "private matters").
"Expectation of privacy" is something the Supreme Court tacked onto the
Constitution in 1967 during the Warren Court.

~~~
pdkl95
> The 4th amendment doesn't say anything about "private matters"

The 4th amendment may not say that directly, but Chief Justice Roberts did in
the majority opinion for Riley v. California:

    
    
        Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience.
        With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many
        Americans “the privacies of life,” Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S., 630.
        The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such
        information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy
        of the protection for which the Founders fought. Our answer to the
        question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized
        incident to an arrest is accordingly simple—get a warrant.

------
0xfaded
Personally I have a strong anxiety about being surveiled.

In a world where friendships are maintained online, CCTV cameras monitor the
real world, and the best jobs are automatically analysing and classifying
data, such anxiety is inhibiting and limiting.

I'm extremely grateful to Snowden and others for igniting this conversation,
but I haven't truely felt secure post 2012. Even writing this feels like it
will become a black mark against my name.

~~~
hartpuff
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but AIUI, here's what a smartphone is, or can
potentially be, capable of acquiring/giving up to persons unknown (in addition
to everything willingly given up to FB/Instagram/Tinder/Grindr/Google):

    
    
        Your face.  
        Your voice.  
        Your conversations.  
        The faces, voices and conversations of people you associate with.  
        Your location at any given time.
    

At least with the aid of helpful little 'check your health' and 'security'
apps/add ons:

    
    
        Your prints.  
        Your DNA.  
        Your health problems or illnesses, if any.

~~~
ljf
Plus the sites you visit and all the bundled information that gives (your
interests, orientations, political leaning, hope, fears, desires etc. etc).
All the contacts you have plus your relationships with them. Your daily
movements, right down to guessing bathroom breaks. Plus information on the
connections you use and potentially the devices around you.

The list goes on...

------
StoryFinder
That final quote just sums it all up: "The primary cause would be that the
strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the
hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some
accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.”

------
norea-armozel
The worse of the modern surveillance zealotry is the fact they claim they'll
leave people with non-mainstream opinions alone yet I've seen all kinds of
arguments that even people who support anarchism should be placed under close
observation or in prison. This troubles me because the whole idea that even if
you're an anarchist that doesn't mean you are violent or willing to be so
disruptive as to become a terrorist. I'm a mutualist anarchist and honestly I
don't care if the government exists or not since there's not much I can
personally do to it. Just espousing my ideas seems to rub certain people the
wrong way even if 99.9% of the time they're purely academic in scope. The fact
that technology exists to allow them to spy on me means they can constantly
harass me and others like me into silence or complete seclusion. So much for a
liberal society, eh?

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dandelion_lover
Why http-link when there is an https one?
[https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/spies/open-
inspection](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/spies/open-inspection)

------
JustSomeNobody
I wonder how long until we have checkpoints at the borders of each state as
yet another means of privacy invasion.

I also wonder at what point will the citizens wake up and just say no.

~~~
ccvannorman
Statistically, the majority of people don't seem to care, which puts
commentors on hacker news alone and easily listed.

Look at the UK if you want to see our future.

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wahsd
There used to be a notion that it is a quintessential right for citizens to be
anonymous to the government, even if that just means choosing or even just
having a choice of interacting with the Government, but also being able to
choose not to and forego some things.

We are ever increasingly accelerating towards what will really be a despotic
dystopia where the government has tabs on you at all times even if it is just
by virtue of deduction.

~~~
twblalock
> There used to be a notion that it is a quintessential right for citizens to
> be anonymous to the government, even if that just means choosing or even
> just having a choice of interacting with the Government, but also being able
> to choose not to and forego some things.

I don't believe that such a notion ever existed in a widespread way, or was a
significant part of the political culture. It would effectively be a way to
"opt out" of government authority. Care to provide any evidence?

------
draw_down
If one is being surveilled, does one care about the cultural history of that
surveillance? I wonder.

