How it used to be a characteristic of awful places like the USSR that the state police engaged in mass surveillance, and that here in America, the police needed a warrant before they were allowed to invade your privacy?
No, I don't remember that. Sure, that's what the US government claimed, but the NSA was doing evil (ECHELON) even when the USSR was around and we destroyed people's lives and careers if they were suspected of being communists. The reality is that the US was never 'the land of the free and the home of the brave,' but we should try to be.
Of all the things that it's OK to run as a business and make a profit off of, that "imprisoning people" is even spoken of as one of them, let alone actually permitted, is unbelievable.
Lots of companies profit off of the US's wars. It's basically corporate welfare at this point.
I agree. But that has nothing directly to do with this.
Wrong. The spirit of the constitution is very much relevant here. In today's world, you have little choice but to hand over information to at least a few companies. If the government is allowed to get any information from any company without even so much as a warrant, then no one can have any reasonable degree of privacy without making great sacrifices. That is unreasonable.
When the fourth takes about "papers," it doesn't literally seek to protect the paper itself, but the information contained on the papers. I'd say protecting people's information is very relevant here.
If you can catch Florida law enforcement doing it now, you would have a really good case for a lawsuit.
Yeah, but would anyone actually be punished? Merely forcing the taxpayers to hand over money isn't as good as imprisoning the ones responsible for violating people's liberties.
I am not asking for an new amendment just that I have no worries about what a private company knows about me.
Why? Private companies cooperate with the government, so if a private company has your information, they'll usually hand it over to the government upon request. But even private companies can screw with your life.
It measures something that some soft scientists arbitrarily determined to be intelligence.
It cannot be perfect, because there is no one simple definition.
In fact, there's not even an objective scientific definition of intelligence. IQ tests are criticized all over for missing things like creativity and the ability to innovate. To say that IQ tests measure intelligence is just silly.
Many people do not like the idea of innate aptitudes, but wishing it false does not make it so.
I believe in innate aptitudes. I do not believe that the soft scientists have actually proven IQ's worth. It was originally designed to see how well people would do in school. I guess people fooled themselves into believe that that's intelligence.
Call it whatever you like, but all the evidence points to marriage as the cure for a lot of societal ills.
Perhaps people who better take care of their kids tend to get married for whatever reason. Marriage is just a title, so there is no logical reason that would have anything to do with it. Correlation != causation, even if I believe your soft science studies.
I know that there are three main motivators for human: greed, fear and greed.
But what you don't know is how the system would work without patents. There would likely be alternate business strategies and perhaps some government intervention of a different sort. You can't really say, since scientific evidence is lacking. We shouldn't except restrictions especially if they don't have science backing them up.
Oh, if you're trying to equate the TSA with border searches, don't even bother.
Now that I think about it, plenty of judges are so thick that we probably need a constitutional amendment that clarifies all of this. The TSA, border searches, the NSA's mass surveillance, DUI checkpoints, etc.
You might want to re-read the 4th Amendment and then pick up a history book.
You might want to read up on "constitution-free zones," because they're sure as hell not just at the border.
Now, personally, I'd like a constitutional amendment restricting the government's powers at the border, but that's another matter. And wait, I know I mentioned something about being "anywhere near the border" in another post, but I don't see it in the post you're replying to.
You've never had an expectation of privacy at the border.
You debunk your statement in your own post. You do have some degree of privacy. Let me quote you:
"To avoid summarizing 225 years of jurisprudence, I'll give the broad outlines of what isn't a reasonable border search. 1. Anything personally invasive or painful: strip searches, body cavity searches, x-rays, surgery 2. Destructive searches of property 3. Lengthy detention"
I consider those to be rules that protect your privacy to some extent. Don't you?
You don't have a right to be anonymous to the government. Your "right to privacy" does not mean the government has to erase you from all their databases. That is what is nonsensical.
What is nonsensical is you ignoring my post, ignoring what my actual position is, and ignoring and all the implications your stupid position has. But making it impossible to have any privacy because the government has the power to get any information from third parties is actually a good thing, because 'the land of the free and the home of the brave' is all about bravely giving up freedoms to the government so it can be free to do as it pleases.
And you claimed that the FISA court would put you in prison.
Wait... are you by any chance studying under cold fjord, one of the greatest superheroes of the modern age!? Everything would make sense. You're trying to save us all from those pesky individual liberties.
And just because you say it doesn't make it right.
I never said that it did.
Which do you think I'm going to trust more. A judge, or you?
The constitution, maybe? Arguments stand on their own merit. There is no need to trust me or a judge.
"If judges interpreted the first amendment to mean that the government has the power to murder anyone without any due process, obviously their interpretation would be incorrect, even if all judges kept interpreting it that way."
But hey, knowing you, I'm sure you'd put all your faith in the judge. Constitution be damned.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that comment about "parallel construction".
It means they don't need to use the information directly against you in court; they can just use parallel construction, which we already know they do in many cases.
There's nobody making you use a cell phone. If you don't like how you're being treated (either by the phone company or by the government), you can always use a landline.
And the government will still violate your privacy in a million other ways. If you don't want that to happen, don't get on planes, (some for now) buses, (some, for now) trains, and don't screw around anywhere near the border. Isn't it nice how, in a supposedly free country, so many options are unavailable to you if you want to keep your privacy? And I'm sure this is perfectly fine with you, being a raging authoritarian and all.
Yeah, just tell people not to use those things. It's not like it's nearly impossible to avoid interacting with third parties that the government retrieves information from, right? Under these nonsensical rules, just about any company can just hand over information about you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
From what I've heard, they will only issue a warrant ex-parte if the government can show a threshold risk to national security.
Right. The rubberstamping court. All the while the NSA collects people's "metadata" en masse. But it's okay, because they have deals with (or have threatened) third parties. Now that's Small Government for you!
You know, there is a reason that we have these things called "judges": they are there to avoid would-be monarchs such as you from applying their own, independent law.
You are appealing to authority. Just because judges say something doesn't make it right. If judges interpreted the first amendment to mean that the government has the power to murder anyone without any due process, obviously their interpretation would be incorrect, even if all judges kept interpreting it that way.
There is no such single tribunal. In the US, it is ultimately up to The People to make sure the government follows the constitution. Judges will eventually be replaced and hopefully ones who respect the constitution will replace them, and with enough effort, politicians can be reigned in, and amendments can be created (perhaps to better enforce the constitution).
Mindless individuals who feel that everything judges do is correct have no place in 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Or maybe, contrary to what you have said, you agree with the current state of affairs, and are not just telling others how the law is?
No one would be free under your version.
They'd be more free than under the reign of corrupt judges. Unless you think that privacy leads to a police state, but that would be strange.
I do not want to be a monarch; I want the government to follow the constitution, which includes its spirit.
There is no explicit constitutional right to privacy. Look for it all you want: you won't find it.
There doesn't need to be. The constitution is a whitelist of things the government can do, not a blacklist of things it can't.
Your baggage will be searched at the airport, in one example, because the "right" to privacy that you think you have is unreasonable against the danger you might pose to the other passengers.
We're supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Free and brave people would not sacrifice fundamental liberties and allow worthless government thugs to search everyone at airports in the name of safety.
So while the courts may often be complicit in the crimes against the American people, that by no means means that their interpretation of the constitution is the correct one. Often, they ignore the spirit of the constitution and even sometimes the words themselves in favor of letting the government do as it pleases. Were the spirit of the constitution considered, the government wouldn't be able to get just any information about you just because it's stored by some third party, and no individual with a brain would ever think that them doing this is a good thing.
I'm just stating the way the law is.
Which is pretty useless, because most people criticize the way the law is or criticize judges' interpretations of it. But it looks more like you're stating what others think the law is, which is even more useless, since those people are often hated for promoting police states.
I don't really feel like siding with pharma corps, but considering the development cost, the alternative to people not able to afford medication is medication not existing because there is no ROI on developing it.
You have scientific evidence of this being the case, I suppose? How could you know what would happen in an alternate reality where they don't have these/any patents? Or is it just speculation?
You have any rigorous, objective scientific evidence to back that up? Mindless speculation (like the "But I can't imagine anything else!" crap that religious nutters like to bring up) isn't allowed. Because if not, then you have zero justification to pass/maintain these laws, as the burden of proof is on those who pass the laws.
But even if you did, patents and copyrights are intolerable because they infringe upon private property rights and/or free speech rights (in the case of copyright). Freedom > safety.
It will likely involve an increased amount of crime, terrorism and money spent on resources to tackle the aforementioned problems. I don't know how much of an increase we're talking about.
Fine with me.
Personally, I'd rather risk some unwanted government snooping (there will always be some bad apples) compared to the risk of crime and terrorism groups gained a foothold.
Then go live elsewhere, not in a country that's supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Corrupt governments have murdered/abused hundreds of millions throughout history, and our own government took part in that (Jim Crow, police corruption everywhere, internment of Japanese citizens, etc.). The absolute worst case scenario is not when terrorist/criminal bogeymen get you, but when your own elected government becomes the criminal, which is what you seem to be missing; I don't expect terrorists to be good guys, but I do expect that of my government, even if I have no trust in them.
In the US, safety is far less important than freedom.
The actual question "So the question is does the Constitution allow a person to use technical means to prevent the government access to data even when a valid warrant is presented?"
Also, governments don't have rights; they have powers. The government cannot stop you from using a tool merely because it makes getting information from you hard/impossible if it gets a warrant; it simply has no such power.
Slashdot Mirror
How it used to be a characteristic of awful places like the USSR that the state police engaged in mass surveillance, and that here in America, the police needed a warrant before they were allowed to invade your privacy?
No, I don't remember that. Sure, that's what the US government claimed, but the NSA was doing evil (ECHELON) even when the USSR was around and we destroyed people's lives and careers if they were suspected of being communists. The reality is that the US was never 'the land of the free and the home of the brave,' but we should try to be.
Of all the things that it's OK to run as a business and make a profit off of, that "imprisoning people" is even spoken of as one of them, let alone actually permitted, is unbelievable.
Lots of companies profit off of the US's wars. It's basically corporate welfare at this point.
I agree. But that has nothing directly to do with this.
Wrong. The spirit of the constitution is very much relevant here. In today's world, you have little choice but to hand over information to at least a few companies. If the government is allowed to get any information from any company without even so much as a warrant, then no one can have any reasonable degree of privacy without making great sacrifices. That is unreasonable.
When the fourth takes about "papers," it doesn't literally seek to protect the paper itself, but the information contained on the papers. I'd say protecting people's information is very relevant here.
If you can catch Florida law enforcement doing it now, you would have a really good case for a lawsuit.
Yeah, but would anyone actually be punished? Merely forcing the taxpayers to hand over money isn't as good as imprisoning the ones responsible for violating people's liberties.
Leave your cellphone at home even if you aren't planning to do 'naughty' things; our government violates everyone's privacy regardless.
I am not asking for an new amendment just that I have no worries about what a private company knows about me.
Why? Private companies cooperate with the government, so if a private company has your information, they'll usually hand it over to the government upon request. But even private companies can screw with your life.
But IQ tests do measure intelligence
It measures something that some soft scientists arbitrarily determined to be intelligence.
It cannot be perfect, because there is no one simple definition.
In fact, there's not even an objective scientific definition of intelligence. IQ tests are criticized all over for missing things like creativity and the ability to innovate. To say that IQ tests measure intelligence is just silly.
Many people do not like the idea of innate aptitudes, but wishing it false does not make it so.
I believe in innate aptitudes. I do not believe that the soft scientists have actually proven IQ's worth. It was originally designed to see how well people would do in school. I guess people fooled themselves into believe that that's intelligence.
the only question is whether we're stupid enough to fall for it.
I don't think there is any question that the general public is composed of warmongering idiots.
Call it whatever you like, but all the evidence points to marriage as the cure for a lot of societal ills.
Perhaps people who better take care of their kids tend to get married for whatever reason. Marriage is just a title, so there is no logical reason that would have anything to do with it. Correlation != causation, even if I believe your soft science studies.
Well, religious nutters would have you believe that marriage is magic. All these problems are actually caused by the lack of true marriages.
You know, that might actually be a good thing to criminalize...
I know that there are three main motivators for human: greed, fear and greed.
But what you don't know is how the system would work without patents. There would likely be alternate business strategies and perhaps some government intervention of a different sort. You can't really say, since scientific evidence is lacking. We shouldn't except restrictions especially if they don't have science backing them up.
Oh, if you're trying to equate the TSA with border searches, don't even bother.
Now that I think about it, plenty of judges are so thick that we probably need a constitutional amendment that clarifies all of this. The TSA, border searches, the NSA's mass surveillance, DUI checkpoints, etc.
You might want to re-read the 4th Amendment and then pick up a history book.
You might want to read up on "constitution-free zones," because they're sure as hell not just at the border.
Now, personally, I'd like a constitutional amendment restricting the government's powers at the border, but that's another matter. And wait, I know I mentioned something about being "anywhere near the border" in another post, but I don't see it in the post you're replying to.
You've never had an expectation of privacy at the border.
You debunk your statement in your own post. You do have some degree of privacy. Let me quote you:
"To avoid summarizing 225 years of jurisprudence, I'll give the broad outlines of what isn't a reasonable border search.
1. Anything personally invasive or painful: strip searches, body cavity searches, x-rays, surgery
2. Destructive searches of property
3. Lengthy detention"
I consider those to be rules that protect your privacy to some extent. Don't you?
Or could that be due to other factors? Besides, a lot of it is victimless crime like arresting people for smoking weed.
You don't have a right to be anonymous to the government. Your "right to privacy" does not mean the government has to erase you from all their databases. That is what is nonsensical.
What is nonsensical is you ignoring my post, ignoring what my actual position is, and ignoring and all the implications your stupid position has. But making it impossible to have any privacy because the government has the power to get any information from third parties is actually a good thing, because 'the land of the free and the home of the brave' is all about bravely giving up freedoms to the government so it can be free to do as it pleases.
And you claimed that the FISA court would put you in prison.
No, I didn't.
Wait... are you by any chance studying under cold fjord, one of the greatest superheroes of the modern age!? Everything would make sense. You're trying to save us all from those pesky individual liberties.
And just because you say it doesn't make it right.
I never said that it did.
Which do you think I'm going to trust more. A judge, or you?
The constitution, maybe? Arguments stand on their own merit. There is no need to trust me or a judge.
"If judges interpreted the first amendment to mean that the government has the power to murder anyone without any due process, obviously their interpretation would be incorrect, even if all judges kept interpreting it that way."
But hey, knowing you, I'm sure you'd put all your faith in the judge. Constitution be damned.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that comment about "parallel construction".
It means they don't need to use the information directly against you in court; they can just use parallel construction, which we already know they do in many cases.
There's nobody making you use a cell phone. If you don't like how you're being treated (either by the phone company or by the government), you can always use a landline.
And the government will still violate your privacy in a million other ways. If you don't want that to happen, don't get on planes, (some for now) buses, (some, for now) trains, and don't screw around anywhere near the border. Isn't it nice how, in a supposedly free country, so many options are unavailable to you if you want to keep your privacy? And I'm sure this is perfectly fine with you, being a raging authoritarian and all.
Yeah, just tell people not to use those things. It's not like it's nearly impossible to avoid interacting with third parties that the government retrieves information from, right? Under these nonsensical rules, just about any company can just hand over information about you, and there's nothing you can do about it.
From what I've heard, they will only issue a warrant ex-parte if the government can show a threshold risk to national security.
Right. The rubberstamping court. All the while the NSA collects people's "metadata" en masse. But it's okay, because they have deals with (or have threatened) third parties. Now that's Small Government for you!
You know, there is a reason that we have these things called "judges": they are there to avoid would-be monarchs such as you from applying their own, independent law.
You are appealing to authority. Just because judges say something doesn't make it right. If judges interpreted the first amendment to mean that the government has the power to murder anyone without any due process, obviously their interpretation would be incorrect, even if all judges kept interpreting it that way.
There is no such single tribunal. In the US, it is ultimately up to The People to make sure the government follows the constitution. Judges will eventually be replaced and hopefully ones who respect the constitution will replace them, and with enough effort, politicians can be reigned in, and amendments can be created (perhaps to better enforce the constitution).
Mindless individuals who feel that everything judges do is correct have no place in 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Or maybe, contrary to what you have said, you agree with the current state of affairs, and are not just telling others how the law is?
No one would be free under your version.
They'd be more free than under the reign of corrupt judges. Unless you think that privacy leads to a police state, but that would be strange.
I do not want to be a monarch; I want the government to follow the constitution, which includes its spirit.
There is no explicit constitutional right to privacy. Look for it all you want: you won't find it.
There doesn't need to be. The constitution is a whitelist of things the government can do, not a blacklist of things it can't.
Your baggage will be searched at the airport, in one example, because the "right" to privacy that you think you have is unreasonable against the danger you might pose to the other passengers.
We're supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Free and brave people would not sacrifice fundamental liberties and allow worthless government thugs to search everyone at airports in the name of safety.
So while the courts may often be complicit in the crimes against the American people, that by no means means that their interpretation of the constitution is the correct one. Often, they ignore the spirit of the constitution and even sometimes the words themselves in favor of letting the government do as it pleases. Were the spirit of the constitution considered, the government wouldn't be able to get just any information about you just because it's stored by some third party, and no individual with a brain would ever think that them doing this is a good thing.
I'm just stating the way the law is.
Which is pretty useless, because most people criticize the way the law is or criticize judges' interpretations of it. But it looks more like you're stating what others think the law is, which is even more useless, since those people are often hated for promoting police states.
I don't really feel like siding with pharma corps, but considering the development cost, the alternative to people not able to afford medication is medication not existing because there is no ROI on developing it.
You have scientific evidence of this being the case, I suppose? How could you know what would happen in an alternate reality where they don't have these/any patents? Or is it just speculation?
You have any rigorous, objective scientific evidence to back that up? Mindless speculation (like the "But I can't imagine anything else!" crap that religious nutters like to bring up) isn't allowed. Because if not, then you have zero justification to pass/maintain these laws, as the burden of proof is on those who pass the laws.
But even if you did, patents and copyrights are intolerable because they infringe upon private property rights and/or free speech rights (in the case of copyright). Freedom > safety.
It will likely involve an increased amount of crime, terrorism and money spent on resources to tackle the aforementioned problems. I don't know how much of an increase we're talking about.
Fine with me.
Personally, I'd rather risk some unwanted government snooping (there will always be some bad apples) compared to the risk of crime and terrorism groups gained a foothold.
Then go live elsewhere, not in a country that's supposed to be 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Corrupt governments have murdered/abused hundreds of millions throughout history, and our own government took part in that (Jim Crow, police corruption everywhere, internment of Japanese citizens, etc.). The absolute worst case scenario is not when terrorist/criminal bogeymen get you, but when your own elected government becomes the criminal, which is what you seem to be missing; I don't expect terrorists to be good guys, but I do expect that of my government, even if I have no trust in them.
In the US, safety is far less important than freedom.
The actual question "So the question is does the Constitution allow a person to use technical means to prevent the government access to data even when a valid warrant is presented?"
Also, governments don't have rights; they have powers. The government cannot stop you from using a tool merely because it makes getting information from you hard/impossible if it gets a warrant; it simply has no such power.