The Framers detested dragnet searches and preventing dragnets was the cornerstone of the Fourth Amendment. Data mining threatens to bring back the dragnet search in digital form.
All the information is held by private companies and the gov’t gets the info from them voluntarily.
Ditto for the First Amendment. Worthless. Instead of the govt prohibiting speech, the govt just has private companies do it for them.
How many times a week on HackerNews do you see this kind of exchange:
A: Facebook censored this or that and thus infringes on free speech.
B: It’s a private company; it can do what it wants.
A: But, but, there’s something wrong with that!
B: Don’t like it, make your own Facebook. Hur dur...
Etc.
Ad nauseum.
Clearly, both (A) and (B) above are trying to reason through something within an outdated and outmoded framework; it’s why both sides sound silly.
Anyway, this is the same thing... but with the 4th amendment.
Same problem.
A private company that holds your data can do with it what it wishes. And, like the first amendment, if the govt makes it clear to these private companies that they ought ‘voluntarily’ cooperate with the govt “if they know what’s good for them,” then then Bill of Rights is worthless.
The 1st and 4th were meant to protect us from a tyrannical govt; not a tyrannical corporation.
Scrap the entire ball of wax and start over.
The Constitution — at this point — is an utter joke.
The constitution has functioned as intended. Its blindingly obvious to anyone that the biggest concern of the founders were to limit and reduce tyrannical governments and corrupt church hierarchies. It's arguable if we've succeeded yet, but given recent examples elsewhere that resulted in millions upon millions dead, I'd say we are on the better side of that one.
Businesses on the scale of a Facebook or a Google or Walmart simply did not exist anywhere, at any point in time in human history up to that point. But they rightly left these matters to the civil authorities, and the governed.
So no, the Constitution is not an utter joke. Our politicians and our indolent populace are.
The Founding Fathers sought to “limit and reduce corrupt church hierarchies”?
That’s not blindingly obvious.
I believe a typical Founding Father would shudder at the thought of the government having anything whatsoever to say about the manner in which a church administered itself.
Public and private point fingers at each other in public.
But in private they are all part of the same machine. But still if we keep shouting freedom we might convince our self we are free.
The point is to not have the entity that has the monopoly on violence - being able to arrest, detain, and perhaps kill you legally - also have the right to silence you or prevent all sorts of other activities that would make it easier for them to arrest, detain, and kill you whenever they feel like it.
