> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
In a digital world, one's "Person" and "effects" have become inseparable from the phones/platforms we communicate with. Participation in many cases is not a choice if one is to function in society.
The requirement that warrants are issued only upon establishment of probable cause also highlights the issue here. It seems highly dubious that a company holding your data and selling that data is somehow an acceptable end-around the warrant requirement.
Is this all technically legal? Seems like it might be. Is this what the authors of the 4th amendment had in mind? Seems extremely unlikely.
you are not inconvenienced when the NSA buys data in the same way that you're inconvenienced when you have to feed/house a soldier.
While it's extremely unlike the authors of the 4th amendment had the internet & etc in mind this concept of selling things to the government surely was known to them and so the current implementation would be OK from their perspective.
A lot of the first 10 amendments are about protecting your physical property from the Government. 2nd - Guns, 3rd - House, 4th - Property, 8th - Money. The digital bits that Google and etc created (ex. metadata) are clearly neither in your procession nor your property. There is no amendment that protects letters you wrote but gave to somebody else nor recordings made by somebody else of your interaction with them.
I can't read the 4th amendment and this article and not come to a conflict. It seems obvious to me that it is unreasonable to expect a person (with the average IQ being 94-98) to understand what data on their phone is public or private.
It's obvious because we have millions of teenagers believing they have privacy on their phones to a point where they break incredibly consequential laws to store sexualized imagery there.
What the average citizen believes is private is where the goal posts should be.
So a potential solution is to poll America asking the following question:
Donald Trump and Joe Biden would both like to download all the data on your phone to share with the world via press conference. Do you accept? If 50% of people so no, it is unreasonable.
Disclaimer: I worked on Geolocation products with the top 3 aggregators and have extensive experience with Palantir.
1. Landlord writes into rental agreements that they could have someone inspect the property every year.
2. Sold access to people's apartments to police officers every year.