Comment by calibas
11 days ago
It's a clear violation of the 4th Amendment, but the government acts like they've found a "loophole" because it's private businesses doing the spying.
11 days ago
It's a clear violation of the 4th Amendment, but the government acts like they've found a "loophole" because it's private businesses doing the spying.
The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, founded in 1850, operated largely outside the constraints of the Fourth Amendment for much of the 19th century because they were private agents, not government actors. Congress passed the Anti-Pinkerton Act in 1893, which prohibited the federal government from hiring Pinkerton employees or similar organizations.
As an attorney I’d like to understand why you think there is a “clear” Constitutional violation going on here. What activity, specifically, are you referring to, and what precedent supports your claim?
As a trial attorney for more than 40 years, I'd say these are examples of egregious illegal surveillance of American citizens by the current government:
1. A retired US citizen emailed a DHS attorney urging mercy for an asylum seeker he had read about. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they followed up by knocking on his door. The federal government's concerted effort to intimidate citizens should concern every American.
https://archive.ph/b9ON8
2. NYT: https://archive.ph/W5FwO ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants
A memo from a Department of Homeland Security official reviewed by CNN and sent to agents dispatched to Minneapolis last month asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information” on “agitators, protesters, etc. so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” And the official reportedly provided such a form, called “intel collection.”
3. Moreover, ICE officers have traveled to the homes of protesters. Not to arrest them, because they have done nothing illegal. Rather, ICE was trying to intimidate them by letting them know ICE knows who they are and where they live. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents
My fault: the link I posted was cut off... full link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents...
Egregious, yes. Concerning, yes. Illegal, I’m not so sure. As a fellow attorney, why do you think they are illegal?[1] Maybe they should be, but our jurisprudence since the 1960s (the “put down the dirty hippies” age) seems to treat the the 4th Amendment not as an expansive right to be left alone but as a narrow one that treats only one’s home as a privacy zone.
I found crim pro to be a very distressing and depressing course.
Also, that last link to The NY Times article is broken.
[1] To suggest that the Government doesn’t know what’s legal and what isn’t stretches credulity. They know; and they’re going to ride as close to that line as possible when motivated by their bosses.
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You're an attorney and you're asking me why the government spying on everyone is a clear violation of the 4th Amendment?
Yes. You’re the one making the assertion (not just that there is a violation but also that the activity is that “the government spying on everyone”); the burden of proof is thus on you.
Attorneys challenge each other as a matter of course in every case before a court. This is how the adversarial system works.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that “I don’t like the activity that is happening here,” or “I think some of this might be unconstitutional.” When someone makes a naked blanket assertion about the law, it’s usually a sign that that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
31 replies →
Seems to me like someone's security camera footage, even if held by a 3rd party, would pretty clearly fall under "papers and effects" same as my crap sitting in a rented storage unit does.
It's only because we've had a century of legal contrivance that it doesn't IMO.
If corporations and government are acting together, this is fascism (according to Mussolini). It seems that is already the case. It's just we call it 'democracy'. Perhaps 'crypto-fascism' is the right term.
"Inverted totalitarianism" is the term you're looking for, although with Trumpism we're flipping to just straightforward totalitarianism. "Crypto-fascism" is applicable to Surveillance Valley's fake strain of "libertarianism", which is more accurately described as corporate authoritarianism.
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