[brlug-poly] Politics Digest, Vol 8, Issue 2

[John Hebert]

>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 19:22:11 -0600
> From: Karthik Poobalasubramanian <karthik at poobal.net>
> Subject: Re: [brlug-poly] Police to get more access to your data?
> To: politics at brlug.net
> Message-ID: <E5C213EE-E7E2-4B19-8C99-7D79723F8FB9 at poobal.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Hi John,
> I should have quoted the point I was commenting about. :)
>
> <snip>
> "It seems kinda ass-backwards for some law enforcement officials to take
> away the 5th Amendment for all US citizens because some citizens keep a
> collection of certain bits on the computers when there are cases of actual
> sexual abuse of children (again, under 18 years) within this country, not to
> mention other countries."
> </snip>
> My understanding is except for few things like voting (some states do allow
> non-citizen permanent residents to vote for state elections), the Bill of
> Rights and the Constitution applies to all residents, US Citizens & Aliens
> alike as long as you on US Soil. I just wanted to bring that point into the
> discussion. Nothing more.
>

Yes, the 5th ("secure in one's own affairs") _currently_ does apply to all
citizens, but statement was made in the context that some law enforcement
officials and citizens believe that certain crimes such as child pornography
justify taking away the right to privacy.

IMO, there is never a legal, moral or ethical justification for taking away
the rights of all citizens because of the crimes of some citizens.

Also, I found a more concise workup of the case details written by Prof.
> Orin S. Kerr, The George Washington Law School.
> http://volokh.com/posts/1197670606.shtml


I will read up on this soon and respond.

Thanks!

John
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.brlug.net/pipermail/politics_brlug.net/attachments/20100207/c1baf49b/attachment.html