Comment by sterlind

the problem is that technology has changed so much that it's legitimately hard to apply 18th-century laws to 21st-century life:

- does the plain view doctrine allow TSA to look under your clothes with mmWave sensors? or to peek through your walls with IR cameras? to use laser microphones to listen in on a conversation? to use EM emissions from your computer to conduct a side-channel attack?

- does the third-party doctrine allow police to read your emails (unlike actual letters) without a warrant? or your papers on Google Docs? to access streaming cloud backups from your home security cameras? to buy your location data from data brokers?

- does your fifth amendment right against self-incrimination protect you from confessing your passwords? from taking a polygraph? from measuring your P300 signal as you look at a lineup? from using fMRI to reconstruct images from your visual cortex?

- does the right to bear arms include AR-15s? machine guns? loitering munitions? tactical nukes? ICBMs?

there's a scale from textual pedantry to handwavy analogies. courts are increasingly going on vibes and hacking together post-hoc justifications because the source material is too abstract and too dated to allow any straightforward reading.