Invasion of privacy

I’m here on my sofa watching a recording on CSPAN of a Supreme Court hearing on the Antoine Jones case.

From the discussion, it looks like the police tagged his car surreptitiously with a GPS device to follow his movements.

I’m sorry that this (apparently he is a) defense attorney Stephen Leckar is apparently not more technical. He is relying on the potential massive amount of surveillance that the technology of tiny GPS devices give, but he should just call it the equivalent to a wiretap.

Maybe there’s some kind of precedent he’s stepping around, but I wouldn’t care.

I HATE the police surveillance society, I don’t care what anybody else’s expectations are.

Okay, that’s one thing I like about the United States Constitution. It’s plain English. That way we can review the decisions of the Supreme Court for the smell test. Tha’ts the way it should be.

Amendment 4: 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.

Seems to me rather obvious that the Fourth Amendment covers here, if the scenario was like that.

This is about the “right of the people to be secure”. That’s a whole lot stronger than “feel secure”, it’s a whole lot more than “expectations”. They brought up the zillions of cameras all over England watching the moves of everybody in the country.

And in the same stretch of fifteen minutes they brought up Orwell’s 1984 scenarios several times. Ho hum.

That’s the scariest part, as if a scenario in which video surveillance was ubiquitous, and it was expected, that’s okay. Well, it it’s NOT okay.

People should have an expectation that without reasonable grounds, they are secure in their autos without being tagged or followed.

They think a GPS device is in the same Amendment 4 category as 30 agents doing surveillance on someone and following them around?

Hey guys? 3o agents following someone is more than anyone’s normal expectation of security in the person, ya think? Do that to a Supreme Court judge and they’ll call the police on you, even if you are the police! Do that to a cop, and they’ll have their chief call your chief!

Tags: civil rights, constitutional, democracy, dictatorship, England, Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Global Position System, GPS, human rights, privacy, Supreme Court, Supreme Court of the United States, United States, United States Constitution