Imaging the contents of my vehicle without a warrant or even without probable cause?
No thank you.
I have nothing to hide, but I fear what others might want to look for and why.
I'll come right out and say it – the balance of power between the common citizen and the government has shifted way too far in favor of the government. More and more we accept invasive search/oversight from powers who continue to deny the public the same sort of transparency and insight.
I also wonder if a group of people could get together and purchase their own x-ray vans and position them at the homes and offices of the politicians who support these vehicles. The vans are safe, right? And it is OK to use them on citizens, right? It'll be a fun experiment!
I think the easiest route is for anyone who cares about these sorts of things is to fund groups like the EFF and the ACLU. I'm just finishing graduate school (and am thus kind of broke) but still have an automatic payment to the EFF setup every month and will probably start the same sort of donations to the ACLU as well.
The fact that your joke wasn't glaringly obvious (and I had seriously contemplated how much it'd cost to hire lobbyists), says much more about the shitty system.
Yeah, nope, not glaringly obvious, to me at least. Thanks for the clarification.
I guess I can see your point, but I think, in general, lobbyists are thought of as external to the congressional establishment, despite the similarity in possible roles, such as you point out... well, at least that's the way it works in my head, fwiw.
Are they really? I suspect a lot of representatives are successful largely due to their ability to get federal funds directed toward their districts. The point I would want to make isn't that representatives should be better at shuffling money around, but rather that the whole game shouldn't be about shuffling money around.
As far as I understand the American system, this is a false analogy: your Congressman 'lobbies' for interests within their core voting block. i.e. why your mid-west Congressman lobbies hard for corn subsidies, if a large percentage of her voting base are corn farmers. Given the "first past the post" nature of American politics, this can exclude up to 49% of your voting base before said Congressman has even been sworn in.
To make this clearer: the way the system is set up, your Congressman isn't lobbying for any individual, they're lobbying for a percentage of the voting block that is sufficient to return them to Congress next vote. This is why campaigning on single issues is so common, and so successful for power-blocs such as the Christian Right.
(This isn't to go into gerrymandering, which further skews the 'democratic' input of your system. If you didn't already know that only ~8-12 seats in Congress are actually contested in terms of party fealty, you really, really, really should do).
"your Congressman 'lobbies' for interests within their core voting block. "
This is where I think current "politics" is lagging many decades behind modern society.
Politicians are fundamentally geographically defined. They get voted in (or out) by groups of people with no relationship with each other beyond happening to live nearby. That idea worked out fine when your village was your whole life, and it works OK for "big issues" that affect everyone (like taxation, education, military), but there are a lot of issues where there is more than enough public support to deserve representation but that support is not geographically localized enough for the current system to give the people concerned a voice.
So many of the things I end up shouting at the television or newspapers about are in this category.
What _I'd_ love to be able to vote for:
A Congressman for The Internet
A Congressman for Copyright and Patents
A Congressman for Motorcyclists
A Congressman for Citizens Rights WRT Government & Law Enforcement
I'd like the opportunity to choose to vote for someone aligned with issues that concern _me_ instead of being assumed to be a "constituent" of an aspirant politician just because of where they and I happen to choose to live.
Instead, the issues that concern _me_ are debated and voted on by people who don't give a damn because they know there's not enough geeks/musicians/inventors/entrepreneurs/motorcyclists/libertarians geographically clustered enough to make any difference at the polling booth, and so the only issues that ever get addressed are ones with a local enough aspect to risk having a likely effect on a city/state/federal elections outcome.
Society has spread beyond having my circle of friends and acquaintances being "other people in my village" - and in the last 20 years the internet has magnified that change enormously, political and legal structures haven't changed to reflect that. (and may never - my circle of friends crosses national boundaries in ways that probably make my desires of how I'm personally politically represented impossible)
The actual text of the fourth amendment is pretty elegant. One paragraph explaining the legal requirement for probable cause and a specific search warrant:
- "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."
We don't need to justify privacy rights. The constitution already does that.
It's the fuzziness that these backscatter machines bring in that's the problem. Is it really a search if you're bouncing invisible light through an object and measuring latencies? Does the concept of a search fundamentally mean "discovering property that was previously unknown"? Or is there a clause to that definition, something like "unless it is readily visible"? Can any legal guys chime in on what the definition of a search is?
IR sensors used on a home constituted a search so could not be used without a warrant. This would likely end up in a similar ruling, especially since it can provide more detail than that the walls and roof are hotter than they ought to be.
Maybe not. Although I don't believe this should be allowed, one can make an argument that the expectation of privacy when in the home is much greater than when one is out in the street, or even in one's car.
In addition to privacy, I'm just as concerned about the potential danger of exposure to X-rays.
I wonder if the van operators have considered how readily those X-rays could be detected. By the sort of people who might want "advanced notice" that they're about to be under surveillance?*
A network of those with bluetooth or wifi connections, spread around critical intersections around the place where you're particularly concerned about your privacy could give you more than enough time to reconfigure things into something that'll look quite different on an x ray screen...
Yes, but at least three major parts of the dissenting opinion do not apply to backscatter machines.
First, Justice Stevens argued that heat emissions can easily be detected by the general public by a variety of means that do not involve special equipment.
Secondly, he argued that heat emissions are a part of the public domain once they leave the home, and are therefore fair game for inspection.
Finally, he argued that because the data provided by the sensors was incredibly crude, and gave no specific details about the home's contents, their use did not constitute a search.
And while I disagree on the whole, all of those are at least reasonable points that a sane person could make regarding IR sensors. But they utterly disintegrate if you switch to talking about firing x-rays into someone's home or car and generating a detailed image of its contents.
How long before they will start selling a lead-based shields to cover your entire house (inside) in order to protect yourself, your body and your family (even your dog) against all those invasive red/infrared/long/short waves that government is about to shoot at your house, without probable cause, just because they can.
I can see an eager SWAT team ready to raid that family house on the corner because since they have those shields they must be terrorist, or at least doing something illegal!
Seems like almost everything to come before the court comes back with a 5-4 ruling, at least everything important. Ideology is wired into the justices as much as it is everyone else.
I read somewhere that the prevalence of narrow victories is by design (or evolution maybe): 1. the court chooses what cases to hear and is unlikely to spend time on anything they all agree on; 2. the body of precedent is large enough so that lower courts aren't making decisions the court would overturn with a wide margin; 3. the parameters of a majority opinion are written to get 5 of 4, anything else is overkill or watered down.
This one wasn't a traditional liberal/conservative split, though, so if it's ideological, it's on a different axis. The majority opinion was Scalia/Thomas/Ginsburg/Breyer/Souter, i.e. 2 conservatives and 3 liberals. The dissent was Stevens/Rehnquist/O'Connor/Kennedy, i.e a liberal, a conservative, and two moderate conservatives.
Still a victory. And, as I pointed out, this tech has much greater potential for interpretation as search as it's providing greater detail than "roof and walls are hot".
IANAL, and I'm sure that I'm in the minority with this view.
But I understand the 4th Amendment to engender a freedom from scrutiny. If they don't have any reason to thing we're doing evil, they should mind their own business, regardless of the degree of physical intrusiveness involved.
Just having the government, or its computers, paying attention to us all the time violates this principle.
As I just commented [0], I believe the same thing. I would point out that "freedom from scrutiny" shouldn't necessarily apply to relationships between private citizens. I think "reasonable expectation of privacy" applies between private citizens (so it's not wrong for a neighbor to observe my house), but when it comes to government resources (i.e. taxpayer money) the standard should be much stricter.
That it's government being restricted by the right to privacy goes without saying. As part of the Bill of Rights, it restricts only the government[1].
The intent of the BoR is just to keep the government from meddling, not to prevent the people, as those directly creating the culture and society, to react as they see fit. The government isn't permitted to stop us from saying bad things [2], but you're perfectly free to respond to the offensive comments of your neighbor. A court mind find someone innocent of a crime as a result of "technicalities" from the the 4th Amendment, but you're still free to shun a person that you believe to be evil.
[1] And, without explicit incorporation by the Court under the 14th Amendment, it applies only to the federal government and not the states. That seems pedantic, but it was only very recently that this was recognized for the 2nd Amendment, for example.
[2] Which doesn't stop them from doing so anyway; see recent legislation about cyber-bullying, for example.
"Unless it's readily visible" in which spectrum? Whether X-ray, terahertz, microwave, UHF, or visible light... it's all just electromagnetic radiation. Seems weird to make distinctions. To me (and trust me, IANAL) it seems that any law governing a "camera" should be equally-applicable.
It's actually a pretty easy line to draw; the spectrum is the visible spectrum of the average human. The reason is that this makes it trivial for citizens to know what constitutes "in plain sight", and thus to control what lies in plain sight. If it bothers you that a legal matter is based on fuzzy lines defined by human physiology, then welcome to the entirety of pretty much all law everywhere.
It's certainly not the actual legal definition of a search, but I would like it to be defined very broadly, something like "the use of government resources (i.e. taxpayer money) to observe or inquire about any private citizen on private property."
Even though it's perfectly legal for a neighbor to notice something potentially suspicious about me (e.g. that I travel a lot or have a lot of guests), I don't think that taxpayer money should be used for concerted observational efforts without some form of court order.
my memory of criminal procedure is fuzzy, but i believe a search is generall defined as an invasion of a "legitimate (or reasonable?) expecation of privacy."
so of course, disputes generally hinge on whether someone's subjective expectation of privacy is objectively reasonable or legitimate.
when i get a minute i'll edit this post with some examples!
the problem with the 4th amendment (really with any of the amendments jefferson wrote) is that it uses vague words like 'unreasonable' and 'probable' that have to be determined/explained in a later trial, which makes it much easier to skirt around the intended meaning of the amendment.
One could also argue that those very same words help make the constitution a living document that defines the spirit of the law far above simply the letter of the law.
Years of precedent in the form of case law do also weigh in, as others have mentioned.
if US judges took the same "living tree" approach to the constitution that Canadian judges do to theirs, I'd agree with you, but since they instead try and discover "original intent" I think it just unnecessarily introduces confusion over what, exactly, the original intent is/was, which allows for people, governments, and organizations to abuse both the spirit and the letter of it.
Frankly, anytime there is any interpretation by a human involved... wait, no, anytime there is a human involved, period, there is the opportunity for abuse of the system.
entirely true, but some things are easier to abuse than others, just like how every computer is theoretically hackable, but some are easier to hack than others.
OK. I'm just trying hard at making a joke here so be patient...
They could have a doctor ride along and examine the x-rays of the people they scan. The program could then be legal under an Health Care mandate! Easy solution!
OK. Not so funny... that's why I'm not a comedian.
The program could then be legal under an Health Care mandate!
Whoa, I missed the "Health Care mandate" Constitutional amendment. Regular laws cannot override the Constitution, which says "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 roving X-ray vans are missing a warrant, probable cause, and a description of "the place to be searched".
the supreme court (led by scalia) has said that "heat-sensor" searches of homes are illegal. it's true there's a diminished expectation of privacy in vehicles, but i'd be very surprised if the x-ray vans withstood a legal challenge.
just recently, there was also a unanimous opinion also that held that warrantless gps tracking is unconstitutional.
"I would be surprised" is not a very good argument. What is clear is that there is no principle guiding the Supreme Court in these decisions; you have to know which way the political winds are blowing. That may "surprise" you, but it's still perfectly consistent with the reality of our political situation.
if you read through some of the big case from the last couple decades, you'll see that there are plenty of principles guiding the court's fourth amendment jurisprudence. i'd actually argue that the court's search and seizure doctrine has been far less affected by the "political winds" than many of its other bodies of case law
in my opinion, the biggest problem faced by the court in fourth amendment cases isn't political pressure, but the subjective notions of privacy of the individual justices. they've lived lives that are very different than those of the average american, and as a result i think their perception of what makes an expectation of privacy reasonable is a bit off
Properly serviced, not faulty, and operated by qualified personnel with health physics training.
(What? You mean that TSA goons get to shoot X-rays at people without having to take the same courses as doctors, dentists, and medical techs, including state certification and continuing-ed requirements?! Sign me up!)
The company’s vice president of marketing Joe Reiss told me in an interview that any dosage received by a human from these backscatter vans would be "exceedingly small," far smaller than a medical x-ray. He says that the vans’ dosage falls well within the health standards set by American National Standards Institute, and AS&E’s marketing materials say that the scan’s x-ray levels are equivalent to the dosage received in fifteen minutes inside a typical airplane.
They neglect to mention is that the nature of backscatter X-ray technology concentrates the radiation exposure on the skin's surface and underlying tissue, causing a significantly higher local dosage than medical X-ray technology and a typical airplane ride. For medical X-rays, precautions are also taken to avoid exposure to reproductive organs, since genital exposure to X-rays in parents is associated with leukemia and other diseases in their children. This is not the case with backscatter X-ray machines, and it is especially relevant for men, since their reproductive organs are so close to the skin's surface.
Obviously, these things can't be turning up everywhere, or that remote possibility that a person would be scanned over 1000 times per year is all-of-a-sudden not so remote. Some regulation is clearly needed.
[Another interesting question is how the drivers of these vans are protected from cumulative radiation exposure, as these X-rays are being scattered around them all day.]
This is a great motivator for bringing back lead based paint :-) More seriously though, its useful to know that back scatter x-rays are blocked by a number of easily obtained materials, and I don't doubt that the same guys who installed vibration dampening foam in your car for a better stereo experience, or the house siding/insulation sales guys, will have a pitch for you if this becomes an issue.
It's also worth noting that these ZBV's deliver a higher radiation dose per scan than an airport scan. That's still quite small, especially compared to a medical X-Ray, but radiation exposure is cumulative. Effectively, every time one of these vans drives by you it's as if the government is giving you a lottery ticket where the prize is cancer. The odds of you being a "winner" are astronomically small, but should the government be able to hand you these lottery tickets without any cause for suspicion at all?
I also suspect that, like airport scanners, these scans amount to nothing more than security theater and pork-barreling for contractors with government ins.
An insurance company could buy scans of cars linked to license plates to see if you are gaining weight over time, or how often you smoke. That's what I came up with after a couple of minutes of thinking. I think this technology should be criminalized.
I can't wait until this actually finds a bomb and they can't prosecute the driver because of the illegal search. Oh well, I guess the cops will learn that lesson after hundreds of people are killed...
I think that may even be something they considered. Ideally, you'd find out about the plot to blow up the X beforehand, but as a last resort finding the bomb in the street sure beats having it go boom. If the perpetrator gets off because there wasn't a warrant, that's not the worst possible outcome.
This is sad news; what is becoming of this country? Does anyone know if they have those in Russia, China, or even on Cuba?
If you think about this, and how this country looked like 7 years ago, where is this all going? I cannot imagine all the changes by the time I will be dead, in 50 years from now, approx.
Honestly, if applied broad spectrum (pedestrians, passenger vehicles, etc) what is the legality of what I conceal on my person or in the privacy of my car? What if I'm in a public space and I have a concealed weapon but a permit to do so? How do the differentiate in that situation?
I really don't like this at all. I love how the company making this product is called 'American Science & Engineering' and if this is applied on a street level it's one of the most un-American things I've seen.
Stuff like this makes me sad about where this country is heading.
If no-one noticed, in the video that meatsock posted (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iABPKd0vFxQ) you'll notice that in the fluff (audio: "military bases" "border controls", "checkpoints") you'll see real world photos with US military personnel in.i.e. This technology has already been deployed. And, judging by the number plates on those border control pictures, on US soil.
The chickens have already flown the coop.
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
No thank you.
I have nothing to hide, but I fear what others might want to look for and why.
I'll come right out and say it – the balance of power between the common citizen and the government has shifted way too far in favor of the government. More and more we accept invasive search/oversight from powers who continue to deny the public the same sort of transparency and insight.
"Who watches the watchmen?", indeed.