It’s hard to keep up with all the ways all levels of government are shredding the Fourth Amendment. From Andrew Napolitano at lewrockwell.com:
This column has recently outlined the specious arguments offered by the feds when they have been caught spying on ordinary Americans. They argue that the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution — which requires a search warrant prior to spying — only applies to law enforcement and not to domestic surveillance. This argument not only defies the plain language of the amendment; it defies history and common sense.
The language of the amendment protects the privacy of all “people” by affirmatively declaring that the right to privacy in “persons, houses, papers, and effects” may only be violated by the government by the use of a search warrant, signed by a judge, based on probable cause of crime, and which specifically describes the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized.
The language of the amendment, and the language of statutes and court rules written at the state and federal levels to implement the procedures for seeking search warrants, makes no distinction on the nature of what the government seeks — evidence of crime or evidence of foreign interests.
Stated differently, a fair and neutral reading of the amendment makes it clear that the probable cause and specificity requirements were intended not only to protect privacy from Big Brother but also to compel the government to focus on crimes after they occur and not on predicting them.
