Preferences

> As far as government intrusion into our privacy, it's addressed by the 4th Amendment's guarantee that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects and that our rights against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.

The Pennsylvania High Court recently ruled that the Pennsylvania local police don't need a warrant to access your search history.

https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=46329186

Clearly, those protections have already been violated.


> The Pennsylvania High Court recently ruled that the Pennsylvania local police don't need a warrant to access your search history. Clearly, those protections have already been violated.

Absolutely. And to keep court-sanctioned violations from getting challenged, a state can utilize a number of tactics to shroud the methods in secrecy. This makes it very difficult for the violated to show standing in a challenge.

The state has nearly every possible advantage in leveraging gov power against the public.

>The Pennsylvania High Court recently ruled that the Pennsylvania local police don't need a warrant to access your search history.

How does this work? Does that mean if Pennsylvania police ask google nicely for it, then google isn't breaking the law in complying? Or that Google has to hand over the information even without a warrant?

You don't understand that news item. The police didn't search a specific person's account, they asked Google (who gave it to them voluntarily) anyone who searched the victim's address in the past week. Nothing unconstitutional about that.
It seems like the equivalent of reading everyone's journals every home in the entire nation. Cartoonishly unconstitutional.

But yes, I'm aware of the Third Party doctrine ruled on by judges whose conception of people making phone calls involved an individual talking to another human being (a.k.a. an operator) to connect you to who you wanted to talk to.

A practice antiquated when the ruling was made and a bygone relic by this point.

But in the absence of a warrant it _ought_ to be.
Then your complaint should be with google for handing it over without a warrant.
Sure, I also dislike corporate policy that doesn't require a warrant for such things. But at the end of the day that is their choice.

My complaint is that Google should not have been permitted that choice in the first place. The entire sequence of events - from requesting the data without a warrant through to handing the data over without a warrant and any following data mining that was done with it should have been forbidden on constitutional grounds. Both parties ought to have been in violation of the law here. We need to fix the gaping hole in our constitutional rights that the third party doctrine represents.

This item has no comments currently.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Story Lists

j
Next story
k
Previous story
Shift+j
Last story
Shift+k
First story
o Enter
Go to story URL
c
Go to comments
u
Go to author

Navigation

Shift+t
Go to top stories
Shift+n
Go to new stories
Shift+b
Go to best stories
Shift+a
Go to Ask HN
Shift+s
Go to Show HN

Miscellaneous

?
Show this modal