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.
The complete text of the fourth amendment to the US Constitution. Part of the US Bill of Rights. Pretty unambiguous, if you ask me. In fact, there are many parts of this Amendment that are so plain that, certainly someone that is all for a "strict constitutionalist" couldn't dare refute them without sounding and looking like the damn fool.
But once again, the powers that be are using the Constitution as toilet paper, while wrapping themselves in the sanctimonious hypocritical rhetoric to further subvert the one document that should be deferred to over all other laws, legal decisions or other documents, papers or proclamations.
More below:
Now, I am no lawyer, but I am married to one, have many as friends and work with more than a few. And I know that there are many here in the dKos sandbox that could much better answer this than I can.
But seriously (and I won't even revisit the NSA unconstitutional wiretapping, even though there is much at issue there as well), how is this Google/AOL/Yahoo/MSN internet search record demand NOT in violation of the fourth amendment?
When I read the fourth amendment, a few terms jump out at me - plain as day:
"Right of the people to be secure"
"Unreasonable search and seizures"
"Shall not be violated"
"Probable cause"
"Particularly describing the place to be searched and...things to be seized"
Excuse me, but WTF???
That is 5 things, in this one amendment alone, that I see being violated by this latest ploy by the mis-administration. And I just want to smack the taste out of the mouths of those mindless parrots who say "if you have nothing to hide, then what does it matter to you?".
Um, excuse me, clueless twit, but how about someone looking to get away from an abusive spouse? How about someone doing research on a disease or disorder they have? How about someone that is doing research for a report or term paper?
Stupid dolts...
But I digress. Let's take a quick look at some of the background here.
From a recent NPR article
Google, Microsoft's MSN, Yahoo and AOL received subpoenas for a random sampling of millions of Internet addresses cataloged in their databases, as well as for records for potentially billions of searches made over a one-week period.
And the Google subpoena also requests a random list of a million Web addresses in its index.
But let's back up even further. The 1998 law, the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA, penalizes Web site operators who allow children to view pornography. Additionally, it required adults to use access codes or register with a site before receiving adult material violated free speech. Now, I am not trying to get into a discussion here about online pornography - I'll leave that to the comment section.....
But there were a number of challenges to this law (pretty much all upheld an injunction against the enforcement of the law), and even the Supreme Court thought that the Ashcroft justice department overstepped their bounds. In fact, the Court held that
The Third Circuit was correct to affirm the District Court's ruling that enforcement of COPA should be enjoined because the statute likely violates the First Amendment.
So, let's put aside the fact that the statute violates the first amendment, because violating the first amendment by this mis-administration is old news.
A quick search (via Google, of course) of the terms "justice department yahoo aol msn search" turned up around 465,000 documents. Hell, even the NY Times wrote an article about it (no doubt buried in the technology section). Now, Google is not party of any legal action, and (obviously), they feel that once again, the justice department has overstepped their bounds.
As noted in this techweb article from Friday,
"Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches," Nicole Wong, Google associate general counsel, said in a statement. "We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously."
There is also the matter of whether the government can access the information it wants through other methods, without sweeping up information on users that has nothing to do with online pornography. According to Danny Sullivan, editor for Search Engine Watch,
Here's a thought. If you want to measure how much porn is showing up in searches, try searching for it yourself rather than issuing privacy alarm sounding subpoenas. It would certainly be more accurate.
And yes, he did continue to say that there was no request for who was making these searches, just for all of the searches over a random one week period.
Back to the government's request/demand. Now, here is my main question. The government says that they are only using this information to "estimate how much pornography shows up in the searches that children do."
Well, here is a basic question for the justice department: How the hell is the government supposed to know what searches are being made by children unless they have the information related to the individuals that make the searches? Well, this doesn't exactly give me the "warm and fuzzies":
Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, declined to say exactly how the data would be used, but according to the government's filings, it would help estimate the prevalence of material that could be deemed harmful to minors and the effectiveness of filtering software
It certainly isn't a leap for the justice department to obtain personal information from the search engines, even if they aren't accessing it now. And as noted above, even if they aren't asking for personal information on who made the searches (which to me seems to go against the very request of "seeing how much porn turns up in searches made by children"), there are other issues that are being violated here.
As noted in
this very good FAQ summary (emphasis mine),
Q: I used those search engines in June and July. Should I be worried about my privacy?
A: It depends. If you typed in search terms that you consider to be private or confidential, you should be concerned. Such terms might include personal information about you, such as your name or street address.
Q: The subpoena came from the Justice Department's civil division. Will the attorneys there share the data with their colleagues at the department's criminal division or the FBI?
A: No law would appear to prohibit them from doing so. A protective order does say that only Justice Department attorneys "who have a need" for the information may receive it.
Q: Then why are privacy groups complaining? Your article includes I-am-outraged statements from the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
A: There are probably a few reasons. First, they'd say, private companies should not serve as convenient information repositories for trial attorneys hoping to win court cases. Second, it's not clear where this information will end up, and how far the protective order stretches.
Third, they simply believe that search engine companies are collecting too much information about their users. Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft set cookies, collect personal information, and retain permanent logs that could be used to create a kind of dossier about a person's search habits.
So, how is a wide ranging, random and sweeping request of random information, that doesn't even include any way to determine the stated intent (how many searches by children turn up with porn sites), yet is (1) unreasonable in size and scope (2) not supported by probable cause and (3) doesn't specifically what is to be searched or seized NOT a violation of the fourth amendment?
Especially in light of this, this and the track record of this mis-administration?
Can anyone answer this for me? And even though I have nothing to hide (especially my contempt for these assholes that are trying to steal every bit of "freedom" here in the US while talking about spreading freedom everywhere else), that is not the point.
The point is that the Constitution should not be disobeyed.