Fighting with these postmoderns is no fun at all. It is fascinating that the first thing he thinks of when he defends his right to privacy is what goes on in his bedroom and bathroom. I guess he figures what he does there underpins American freedom and democracy. Whatever happened to the noble subversive challenging official injustice by candlelight in his basement?

It does take monumental historical ignorance and even a lack of knowledge of any modern culture but the Western upper classes to think either is fundamentally private. Igloos ain't got bedrooms.

I'm sure John Wayne Gacy thought his crawl space was private.

I know what he means. I was ordering a pizza yesterday when I remembered Gen. Hayden was scanning the pen registers. I decided not to get pepperoni--too 'foreign'. Chilling. And anchovies or pineapple are out of the question.

Hunter Thompson once said "It's not paranoia when they're really after you."

It's also not paranoia when it's actually End Stage Bush Dementia with Delusions of Mediocrity.

It's a nice touch though, comparing one's self to the victims of East Germany and Iraq--given that he probably opposed the liberation of both.

Well, he writes for Wired, so naturally the nation's illegal surveillance system would be charting his every move since Jan. 20, 2001, because he's so gosh-darn important. And now that he's written this, odd are Dick Cheney has made a personal phone call to his covert Halliburton hit team to whack Bruce before he can speak any more truth to power and restore the proper course of American civillization.

The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la!

Well, I've read a lot of Bruce Schneier, and heard him speak, and usually he's got something fairly reasonable to say. His stuff on an "insurance" model for computer security, as just one example, is brilliant.

But this just shows how insidious a disease BDS is, striking where one least suspects...

There is a 4th amendment that applies to the President and some people don't think it is "reasonable" to be looking into people bathrooms, but I take it that that is of no concern to anybody here.

"I guess he figures what he does there underpins American freedom and democracy"

No, but he is saying that the government left to it's own desires without the disipline of a constitution is capable of being a "peeping tom" because the government is nothing more than people such as John Wayne Gacy (as well as a few decent ones).

h:

So there isn't a problem when the government follows the Constitution? Excellent, case closed then.

Jay

No.

h:

You only go to the bathroom at home?

When I lived in Army barracks, the urinal was one long trough and a cluster of toilets sprouted from the floor with no privacy screening whatsoever. Cry me a freakin' river.

1) The "bathroom" and "bedroom" functions considered above are each in its own way so distracting as to impair one's ability to discern an approaching enemy or predator. Thus both successful instinct and successful culture would favor development of a sense of "privacy.:

2) Noel's flippant comment about the call to the pizza place underscores the puerility of the criticism of the NSA program. No one would ever know whether he had ordered pepperoni or pineapple pizza, only that he had called a certain pizza vendor.

Lou:

Yet the notion of privacy did not develop in most peoples and even here only recently for sex, not at all for toilet.

Jay
No.
Posted by: h-man at May 19, 2006 10:57 AM

Would you care to illuminate this answer? No, the case isn't closed or No, there is still a problem when the government follows the Constitution?

Chris B

There is value in not having OJ stare at my Johnson over and above the 4th Amendment therefore there can still be a "problem" regardless of technical compliance with the 4th amendment.

Secondarily the reasonableness requirement in the 4th amendment would seem to limit the government's ability to conduct surveilance of my Johnson to merely where it is tangential to conduct that is properly under investigation. If for instance NSA is not limiting the population
under surveilance to that group of people who could "reasonably" be suspected of improper
behavior then I think they are operating in violation of the 4th amendment.

Lastly the poster's previous to my comment seem to indicate that peeping into private areas was not a transgression of any sort. Whether by government officials or private citizens. In other words I have committed no violation of any "rights to privacy", any faux pas, if I was calmly viewing your wife undressing in her bedroom or igloo for that matter. (assuming of course that I have not received previous approval)

I'm not a lawyer.

h-man:

There is value in not having OJ stare at my Johnson over and above the 4th Amendment therefore...

I don't think so. Oh, you mean for Orrin?

Anything you're willing for AT&T to know ain't private.

The very mention of "bedroom & bathroom" in this debate is silly and deliberatly misleading. As mentioned by Lou, what the NSA is doing is no more invasive then the US Postal Service. Just as the USPS doensn't open your letter, the NSA isn't listening to your phone call. And, if the information obtained by the NSA is in fact comming voluntarily, or at least cooperatively, from the phone companies then I would guess all complaints about "search and seizure" become baseless. You cannot have an unreasonable search and seizure if you didn't search for or seize anything.

David

I can want At&T to know something and it is still private as to other people ( and to the govt, unless under the terms of a valid warrant).

Jay

Same answer to you.

This was precisely the issues that concerned the revolutionaries and why they wanted the 4th amendment (Phone records not Johnsons). They were concerned about "general" writs of assistance

No, the revolutionaries would have laughed at the notion that sex or toilet were private.

h:

Added value does not a right make.

h

I'm generally sympathetic to your argument as regards to private individuals.

Yes, private parties ought not have carte blanche to observe private conduct but that general rule is modified in several steps.

You forfeit a substantial expectation of privacy if you purposely engage in ordinarily private behavior in the men's room at Fenway.

There should be no expectation of privacy regarding incidental observation of private conduct. You can't prohibit me from telling anyone that I saw you in men's room at Fenway park, or that I heard loud noises from a hotel room that you stayed in.

Similarly, information that AT&T gathers incidental to your use of their services is theirs, and you should have no expectation that it will remain private.

Lastly, nothing is private from law enforcement officers armed with a valid search warrant.

There can be no "eternal" (note the author's usage) expectation of privacy for that which isn't generally private.

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on?

A conversation involves at least one other person. By what stretch of the imagination is that private?

I can want At&T to know something and it is still private as to other people ( and to the govt, unless under the terms of a valid warrant).

No, you really can't. It is well-established that envelope information is not protected by the Fourth
Amendment because it is information you voluntarily disclose to a third-party.

In any event, "privacy" didn't exist until 1890, when Louis Brandeis invented it.

OJ
I'm not concerned with the propriety of "taking a peek", but only whether the Fed. Govt. is exercisely the authority granted it by the constitution and no more. They can look at your private records (and private parts) but only under a valid warrant that has reasonable specificity to particular crime. (of course without a warrant also, but with the same standards being applied after the fact)

Let's say that Bush bluntly said " in an effort to combat terrorism I will ignore the 4th amendment, search private papers, all homes, all citizens. 24/7 monitoring of all of your activities, regardless of what any courts say and regardless of any likelihood that you are involved in terrorism. Your position is that there is no check, short of a super majority in Congress for impeachment.

I disagree. True there is always the threat of a President doing that, but it is important that people realize that it is lawless and not condoned by the constitution, whether done by the President alone or by approval of Congress.

"Eternal" I presume the author merely means on going.

Chris, David

If I leave footprints of my activity with AT&T, and they give records of that to the Federal Government voluntarily, you are perhaps correct.

However, the Stored Communications Act (SCA), and in particular the prohibition on disclosing records relating to wire communications to a government entity found in 18 U.S.C. 2702(a)(3).

Actually Chris my opinion is that the Administration did focus on a smaller group. Muslims at particular Mosque's. Just a hunch.

h:

That's great, but you aren't talking about privacy.

h: I'm doubtful that the SCA applies, although at this point we are without enough information about the data-mining program to tell. If it does apply, I doubt that it trumps the President's inherent Article II powers, as enhanced by the authorization of force.

In any event, I take it what we're agreed that the Fourth Amendment clearly doesn't apply and that this information is not protected by any fanciful right of privacy.

David

Doesn't the statute I refer to require a warrant?

As described by NSA testimony, the program was a "fishing expedition" and a warrant would not have been issued by a court (or FISA) which is why NSA didn't ask for one.

Article II as you interpret it is too broad. But I will defer to your knowledge and quietly fade from this discussion. Bye.

PS. OJ, Why am I not talking about privacy?

Conceding the historic propriety of peeking concedes the privacy argument.

h: I agree that they couldn't have gotten a warrant, but the analysis doesn't stop there. I doubt that a data dump of the originating and destination phone number for all calls made by all customers during a certain period is information "pertaining to a subscriber to or customer of such service." In other words, the statute prohibits the government from saying "I want all Joe Blow's phone records," but that's not what's happening here.

Look at it like a DWI Roadblock on New Years Eve. The police don't have probably cause to stop any particular car, but they are allowed to stop all cars.

David: Excellent points. The DUI stop is certainly far more unreasonable than the alleged NSA program. It involves a physical stopping. Yet, I think the SCt approved DUI stops by 8-1 or 7-2. So, it is clear to me that the NSA program is not "unreasonable" as a matter of constitutional law.

H-man: The "right to privacy" you mention doesn't exist in the Constiution. See abortion, debate about.

Lou,

Not only would the government not know what I put on my pizza, they wouldn't even know it was me or that it was a pizza joint I was calling.

Now suppose every other take-out order was to Pakistan or that many suspected collaborators all ordered their pizzas there. Only then would a name be put with a number and further scrutiny ensue.

Leahy tried to make hay with his "millions of Americans can't be terrorists" meme, but the very fact that it is broad-based is yet another way that the program ensures individual anonymity and therefore a reasonable measure of privacy. And I won't even go into the fact that Leahy once proposed the same program.

The author: "We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom." Yeah--unless they're the same thing.

Thanks to the Drive-by Media, once again Americans know why there hasn't been a successful attack since 9-11. AND SO DO THE TERRORISTS.

If privacy is defined as the state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion, then yes we do have a "right" to such a condition, at least from governmental intrusion, via the 4th and perhaps the 5th amendment. So there may be no general Constitutional right to "privacy" but there are several specific ones.

OJ, you are asserting I presume that we have no natural right to that state of affairs outside of the constitutional prohibitions. You are correct. If I were to say to you "do not look at me", or "do not listen to me" then I am in effect attempting to place a duty on you which you have no obligation to accept.

None of the above relates to the Roe v Wade case.

Except that you are in fact obligated not to kill.

h: Where in the Constitution does it say that the government can't ask some third-party what it knows about you?

If there is a law prohibiting the third party from telling the government, then the government is guilty of conspiracy to violate the law, even if the transaction is voluntary.

There actually is a right to speech, not one to privacy.