U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon criticized the National Security Agency’s metadata collection program on Monday in a lengthy ruling, declaring it “almost Orwellian” and “likely unconstitutional.”
Leon concluded that, “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The founders didn’t have telephones or email. What areas were included in their conception of privacy?
this does seem a little academic being as though those things used to garner info were not even thought of and places were limited as the article says. however IMO if they had been and they personally possessed them they would have been in the mix, looking out for number one.
. The only point of agreement among Fourth Amendment scholars is that the founders objected to warrantless and unreasonable home invasions. In the mid-18thcentury, officers of the British crown went house-to-house through entire towns looking for smallpox sufferers and impressing men into naval service. Nighttime visits, especially when officers entered without knocking, were particularly offensive to colonists and contributed to revolutionary sentiment.
why is there no mention of safety involving wife and kids were they only concerned much like today's politicians about their personal wealth?
It was commonplace in the founding era, and therefore presumably constitutional, for government officials to search privately owned ships without a warrant. It’s not clear why the framers thought ships so clearly different from homes.The conventional wisdom refers to pragmatism: Unlike a home, a ship could sail away with contraband while officials sought a warrant. It’s also possible that the founders simply didn’t consider ships private places, with all of the salty sailors trudging around.We can’t say with certainty whether the legality of ship searches would have extended, in the minds of the framers, to carts, wagons, and modern-day automobiles, though.
i was thinking same as article ships were havens for all sorts of contraband from plants to people, tariffs would be imposed and legal issues but like today's ships they still are what they were conveyors of unreported wealth, still from plants to drugs to people of many races for profit.
