

Is the Fourth Amendment Now Illegal? - darklighter3
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/08/is-the-fourth-amendment-now-illegal.html

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mpyne
No, but it is apparently misunderstood.

In the meantime the Fifth Amendment already should protect you against being
compelled to incriminate yourself.

For the rest, for better or worse it's always been a government loophole to
wait for you to tell a third-party something and _then_ grab it. We used to
have a government office that would read all (ALL) Western Union telegrams
going abroad and coming within, for example.

Sometimes the government self-limits it's ability to do this (e.g. wiretapping
phones... we've gone from days where phone conversations were conducted on a
"party line" 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).

The problem with self-limiting is that such limits can be just as easily
undone (e.g. Patriot Act).

So perhaps a specific Amendment regarding privacy itself is warranted, because
the Fourth Amendment doesn't speak to that itself, unless we wait for another
activist Supreme Court decision ;)

But even in that case, I just don't see the NSA completely going out of the
game as I don't think Americans will subject themselves to a "no foreign
communications wiretaps" law, as that is something even the Germans seem to
explicitly permit in their legal code.

