[Peace-discuss] Who wants to restore the Constitution?

[Stuart Levy]

Re 'Who wants ...': Hearteningly, there are judges still willing to throw
sand in the works, who believe that Fourth Amendment protections
do mean something:

    http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/federal-court-e-mail-entitled-to-fourth-amendment-protection/

    In what could turn out to be a landmark case, a three-judge panel of the
    Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that email held on an ISP server
    is subject to the protections of the Fourth Amendment: In a landmark
    decision issued today in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the
    Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a
    search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by
    email service providers.  Closely tracking arguments made by
    EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation, eff.org] in its amicus brief,
    the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation
    of privacy in their stored email as they do in their phone calls and postal mail.
   [...]
    [T]he police may not storm the post office and intercept a letter,
    and they are likewise forbidden from using the phone system to make
    a clandestine recording of a telephone call–unless they get a
    warrant, that is. It only stands to reason that, if government agents
    compel an ISP to surrender the contents of a subscriber’s emails,
    those agents have thereby conducted a Fourth Amendment search,
    which necessitates compliance with the warrant requirement….
   [...]
    This holding only applies in the Sixth Circuit for the moment and it will
    be up to other courts across the country to apply the holding.  Hopefully,
    they’ll do the right thing.


On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 10:09:04PM -0600, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> From 
> <http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/20/surveillance/index.html>:
>
> Of all the surveillance state abuses, one of the most egregious has to be 
> the Government's warrantless, oversight-less seizure of the laptops and 
> other electronic equipment of American citizens at the border, whereby they 
> not only store the contents of those devices but sometimes keep the seized 
> items indefinitely.   That practice is becoming increasingly common, aimed 
> at people who have done nothing more than dissent from government policy 
> ...  If American citizens don't object to the permanent seizure and copying 
> of their laptops and cellphones without any warrants or judicial oversight, 
> what would they ever object to?
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