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0 pointssomenits2y ago0 comments

It depends. If someone breaks into your house with government encouragement, that’s a Fourth Amendment violation. If he breaks into your house because he’s a burglar, and then happens upon something he knows the government would want, and then sells that information to the government, it’s not a Fourth Amendment violation.

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krapp2y ago

The question is, if you hold a garage sale and someone buys your stuff and the governments then buys that stuff from whomever you sold it to, is it a Fourth Amendment violation?

Because that's what's really happening here. Once you sell your data to Facebook, Twitter, etc, it's no longer "in your house." If you granted third parties license to collect and sell your data under terms of service, then that data no longer belongs to you, and you agreed to that..

To me the bigger problem isn't the government buying data on the open market, it's that data is a market to begin with.

somenitsOP2y ago

>Because that's what's really happening here. Once you sell your data to Facebook, Twitter, etc, it's no longer "in your house." If you granted third parties license to collect and sell your data under terms of service, then that data no longer belongs to you, and you agreed to that.

That's the general thrust of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and is called the "third-party doctrine". But the Carpenter decision in 2018 is a big exception to that, and it's likely that more are to come.

mc322y ago

So a one off garage sale run doesn’t seem “unreasonable” —they came upon it… accidentally or gumshoed it… but once it becomes systematic and pervasive I definitely believe it is in contradiction with the fourth amendment to the constitution of the US

iinnPP2y ago

If the government is using the data to bypass a restriction then that same government is unlikely to create a law to change that.

Seems like a problem that will never be fixed, on purpose.

somenitsOP2y ago

You would think so, but Congress has occasionally done things like this, like pass the Wiretap Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, both of which impose restrictions on government access to information beyond what the Courts at the time required under the Fourth Amendment.

One concerning development is how much the Democratic Party, which used to be a major proponent of restrictions on government searches, has cozied up to the defense and intelligence establishments since 2016 because of a shared interest in stopping populist right-wing movements that also happen to be anti-interventionist. They're also less keen on digital rights these days because they want to censor right-wingers online.

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krapp2y ago

The question is, if you hold a garage sale and someone buys your stuff and the governments then buys that stuff from whomever you sold it to, is it a Fourth Amendment violation?

To me the bigger problem isn't the government buying data on the open market, it's that data is a market to begin with.

somenitsOP2y ago

mc322y ago

iinnPP2y ago

If the government is using the data to bypass a restriction then that same government is unlikely to create a law to change that.

Seems like a problem that will never be fixed, on purpose.

somenitsOP2y ago

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