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• Thursday, January 8, 2009 10:06 PM

  Arne

  You don't "lose" Fourth Amendment protections against searches only because you are a suspect. The police have a right, with a properly executed warrant, to search my house based on probable cause that my house might have evidence of a crime you committed (even if I don't know anything about it). This is a reasonable search, and the Fourth only prohibits unreasonable searches (a right I still possess). Both you and I are nominally innocent people at the time. And may still be. That doesn't prevent the warrant from issuing.

  Ok, now let's pull this back into my original post about roving wiretaps and the fourth amendment rights of communications providers.

  The police show up at your house with a warrant to seize the cassette tape from your answering machine but the warrant, instead of specifying your house, said any house that may contain a cassette tape related to my suspected crime.

  Valid warrant? No.

  I understand that currently law and precedent view voice communications as different than email or text communications. To try and keep things simple and because there is no logical or constitutional reason to treat them differently*, I am going to use voice conversations in my following example, but as far as I am concerned, they will apply equally to email or any other internet communication.

  Let's say you have a VOIP server set up in your house. Your software allows your friends to voice chat with each other. The police show up at your house with a warrant to install software on your VOIP server, but the warrant, instead of specifying your house, said any house.

  In this case, the communications provider, you, have fourth amendment rights. Why should you have less fourth amendment protection in this example than in the first example?

  Now, you may argue that since traditionally we have only had a handful of communications providers, that a non specific warrant isn't that big of a deal because we could only possibly search a very limited amount of "houses."

  The world doesn't work that way anymore. Anyone can now be a communications provider.

  Is this making any more sense?

  Having read your postings, I know you have the tech ability and intelligence to get what I should be saying, so I am doing a terrible job explaining this. If I can't explain this to you, I have no hope finding a simple way to explain this to the average person. Since I think this is important and the same issue applies to the new FISA revisions, I guess I am trying to say thanks for struggling though this with me.

  * I would love to hear an argument if you have one.

  —thelastnamechosen Read thelastnamechosen's other letters
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