Quotulatiousness

February 12, 2012

Interpol system key in arrest of Hamza Kashgari

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:27

Abuse of a system designed to catch international criminals led to the arrest of Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari for “insulting the Prophet Muhammed” on Twitter:

Interpol has been accused of abusing its powers after Saudi Arabia used the organisation’s red notice system to get a journalist arrested in Malaysia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained at the airport “following a request made to us by Interpol” the international police cooperation agency, on behalf of the Saudi authorities.

Kashgari, a newspaper columnist, fled Saudi Arabia after posting a tweet on the prophet’s birthday that sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats. The posting, which was later deleted, read: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you … I will not pray for you.”

More than 13,000 people joined a Facebook page titled “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari”.

Clerics in Saudi Arabia called for him to be charged with apostasy, a religious offence punishable by death. Reports suggest that the Malaysian authorities intend to return him to his native country.

February 11, 2012

“Courts are often the state’s battering rams, used for breaking down individual rights and freedoms”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

George Jonas explains why Canadians were more free before their rights and freedoms were codified in the Charter:

The Canada in which I landed in 1956 may not have had a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it had rights and freedoms galore, making it the envy of the world. The Canada in which I make my home today has a Charter, but Canadians who say they had more rights and freedoms 50 years ago aren’t paranoid: They did.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between written instruments of freedom, such as a Charter, and freedom itself. It’s as if freedom were too fragile to be put into words: If you write down your rights and freedoms, you lose them. Minimally, governments will try to take away every freedom you haven’t remembered to include.

“Where does it say you have a right to breathe, sir? Surely it’s not a fundamental right. If it were, it would be in the Charter.”

The 19th century British constitutional scholar, A.V. Dicey, foresaw this. He cautioned against written constitutions for this very reason, among others.

Part of the reason for the inverse relationship between written rights and actual freedom is the court system:

When I came to Canada, a court of law was often a place where individuals went for protection against the state. These days, they’d be taking a chance. Courts are often the state’s battering rams, used for breaking down individual rights and freedoms. Climate trumps the law, obviously, considering the law isn’t the law until a judge says it is. There is global warming, as the world is warming to tyranny. A judicial climate change has turned Canada’s courts from frequent champions of individual liberty to near-permanent defenders of social policy.

A judicial expression used to call policy “an unruly horse.” If you’ve time for only one book to see how events unfold when policy starts driving the law, pick up Christie Blatchford’s account of the native land-claim standoff at Caledonia, Ont., called Helpless. It shows what happens when the justice system becomes a branch of social engineering.

February 9, 2012

Brazil tries to quash Twitter users over speed trap tweets

Filed under: Americas, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:44

Proving yet again that the main concern is revenue generation rather than safety, Brazil is trying to force Twitter to stop its users from sending out tweets that warn about speed traps:

The attorney general of Brazil has filed a lawsuit against Twitter in a bid to block accounts that warn drivers of police speed traps and roadblocks.

The government argues the tweets interfere with police efforts to fight drunk driving, reduce accidents and uncover evidence of crime, report CNN, PC Magazine, The Next Web and BBC News.

The suit, which seeks $290,000 for each day that Twitter or its microbloggers fail to comply, claims the warnings violate criminal and traffic laws.

Twitter recently announced that they now have the capability of restricting the distribution of tweets within countries (they used to block worldwide distribution by default).

H/T to Walter Olson for the link.

February 8, 2012

“[C]ourthouses were places where justice was done. Today, people … look at them as places where injustice will be done.”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:43

Karen Selick on the more obvious signs of security in Canadian courtrooms:

I articled in Toronto in 1976-1977, when anyone could freely breeze in and out of the courthouses — including Osgoode Hall, where the Ontario Court of Appeal sits — without ever seeing a police officer, being searched or having to show ID.

So what has changed over the past 35 years to make our courthouses so fearful? The homicide rate has actually fallen significantly over that time, although violent crime in general has risen.

But private businesses still don’t find it necessary to take this level of precaution. I can walk into a Toronto shopping mall as freely today as I walked into Toronto courthouses 35 years ago. Is there something unique about courthouses that makes them more likely scenes of violence?

My hypothesis is that people were more willing to accept the notion 35 years ago that courthouses were places where justice was done. Today, people are more likely to look at them as places where injustice will be done.

Many more people are compelled to interact with “the law” these days, simply because there is so much more of it. Regulation over citizens’ lives has exploded, and much of what happens in court cannot be described as having anything to do with justice.

February 5, 2012

Individual responsibility and underage drinkers attempting to launch bottle rockets from their anuses

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:15

No, really:

8. [Defendant] was highly intoxicated on this date and time, and decided in his drunken stupor that it would be a good idea to shoot bottle rockets out of his anus on the [Alpha Tau Omega fraternity] deck, located on the back of the ATO house.

10. [Defendant] placed a bottle rocket in his anus [and] ignited the fuse, but instead of launching, the bottle rocket blew up in Defendant’s rectum, and this startled plaintiff and caused him to jump back, at which time he fell off of the ATO deck, and he became lodged between the deck and an air conditioner unit adjacent to the deck.

13. Per the applicable codes … the deck in question should have had a railing, which comported with said codes.

16. ATO owed plaintiff a duty to provide a safe deck, including a railing, and … a duty to supervise its guests and its own fraternity members, such as Defendant, and other under age persons, from consuming alcohol on its premises, which leads to stupid and dangerous activities, such as shooting bottle rockets out of one’s own anus.

H/T to Dave Owens for the link.

February 4, 2012

The true slippery slope in the Ian Thomson case

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:24

Rex Murphy gets to the bottom of the crown’s odd fixation on prosecuting Ian Thomson for successfully scaring off arsonists who attempted to burn his house down around him:

Mr. Thomson is alive, his house stands, but the Crown is still busy with him. Why is this man being punished for self-defence? Why are the Crown prosecutors making his already tormented life more miserable?

I can only suggest it is because in this, as in similar cases, our caring authorities are uncomfortable with the idea of a citizenry that retains some common sense and courage when it comes to self-protection or the protection of their property. Why, here in Toronto two years ago, a Chinese-Canadian merchant was himself charged with nothing less than “kidnapping” when he, with some help, captured a chronic shoplifter and thief. The “kidnapping” amounted to holding the wretch that was robbing him till the police arrived. They charged the storekeeper after making a deal with the thief. If this is not dread of a resourceful citizenry, then what is it?

Here’s another theory: Perhaps we have subscribed to the Thomas de Quincey school of criminology. De Quincy, as every schoolboy knows, was the great 19th-century author and essayist, the creator of the classic Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He also penned two satirical, fearsomely prescient essays, beginning in 1827, on Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts. In the second of these, he outlined an interesting perspective on how dabbling in one form of crime can gradually, almost imperceptibly, lead to other, more horrific, desperate and truly despicable matters:

“For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination … Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.” Very wise words indeed.

February 2, 2012

In Arizona “any time two or more people work together to influence a vote … they instantly become a ‘political committee'”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:08

What’s all this about “free speech” if you are legally encumbered with ridiculous regulations even before you speak?

Dina Galassini does not seem to pose a threat to Arizona’s civic integrity. But the government of the desert community of Fountain Hills believes you cannot be too careful. And state law empowers local governments to be vigilant against the lurking danger that political speech might occur before the speakers notify the government and comply with all the speech rules.

Last October, Galassini became annoyed — like many Ron Paul supporters, she is easily annoyed by government — about the city’s plan to augment its spending with a $29.6 million bond issue, to be voted on by mail by Nov. 8. On Oct. 6, she sent emails to 23 friends and acquaintances, urging them to write letters to newspapers and join her in two demonstrations against the bond measure. On Oct. 12, before she could organize the demonstrations, she received a stern letter from the town clerk: “I would strongly encourage you to cease any campaign-related activities until the requirements of the law have been met.”

State law — this is the state of John McCain, apostle of political purification through the regulation of political speech — says that any time two or more people work together to influence a vote on a ballot measure, they instantly become a “political committee.” This transformation triggers various requirements — registering with the government, filing forms, establishing a bank account for the “committee” even if it has raised no money and does not intend to. This must be done before members of this fictitious “committee” may speak.

Is Sino-Forest a typical Chinese company?

Filed under: China, Economics, Government, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:52

Colby Cosh posted an initial article on the investigation into Sino-Forest’s business back in June:

Timber company Sino-Forest is locked in a fascinating battle for survival against Carson Block, a stock analyst with a mixed record of publicity attacks on Chinese-based enterprises. With professional analysts reluctant to say what they make of Block’s “strong sell” report on Sino-Forest, I’m in no position to endorse it as a piece of financial advice or investigative journalism. Considered strictly as entertainment, however, the report is remarkable.

Block has documented that Sino-Forest operates with extraordinary opacity for a company whose holdings are surely very widely distributed — particularly, one assumes, within Canada. Sino-Forest claims to be doing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of sales through mostly unidentified “authorized intermediaries” in China — traders who are apparently happy to let the company buy title to trees, hold them as they appreciate, take on the bulk of the costs and risks in the meantime, and then snap up revenues when the trees are eventually converted into wood products. Block, having poked around a bit in the literal Chinese backwoods, questions whether much if any of the reported underlying activity is happening.

[. . .]

Sino-Forest is refusing, despite intense pressure, to make a full disclosure of the identities of the “authorized intermediaries” who are making its money. The company claims that to do so would put it at a competitive disadvantage, which makes one wonder why its business model ought to depend so heavily on sheer obscurity. One possible answer is that Sino-Forest’s real, fundamental business is some sort of cryptic regulatory arbitrage; that seems like a game potentially worth playing with paper assets in places that have a strong rule of law, but it is surely a dangerous one in a nominally Communist country, where a nationalization could be arranged in the space of an afternoon. (Or where some regional Party functionary could simply be bribed to “lose” crucial paperwork.)

Today, he posted a follow-up report:

Could a curious investor look at actual maps of timber controlled by Sino-Forest agents, you ask? Well, you see, it’s not exactly kosher for foreigners to carry around maps of remote parts of China. You can borrow them from forestry officials if you really need to. Will the local forestry bureaus confirm Sino-Forest’s claims about plantations operated by its agents? Well, sometimes they’ll give you a certificate of sorts, for all the good it might do. “The confirmations are not title documents, in the Western sense of that term,” the committee report notes. (As I understand it, the Western meaning of “title document” is that it gives one an unquestioned, justiciable claim to ownership of something, whether the Party or the Army or the good Lord in heaven approve or not.)

[. . .]

The impression given is that you need influential “backers” to do business in China. The question for the Western investor, though it’s probably now moot, is whether the real role of these backers is to help exploit Chinese resources for the benefit of the Western shareholders or to help fleece Western shareholders for the benefit of Chinese suppliers and bureaucrats.

As Jon, my former virtual landlord puts it, this is a hobby horse I like to ride now and again.

February 1, 2012

Arson victim now being dragged through the courts for defending himself with firearms

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:26

Canadian prosecutors have a strong aversion to the idea that people should be allowed to protect themselves, especially if firearms are involved:

Just when was Ian Thomson guilty of unsafe storage of a firearm? Mr. Thomson is the Port Colborne, Ont., man currently standing trial in a Welland, Ont. courtroom after he and his home were attacked by firebombers in August, 2010. (That’s correct, in the topsy-turvy world of Canadian criminal justice, Mr. Thomson and his home were the ones attacked and yet he is the one on trial.)

Having dropped other more serious charges — such as dangerous use of a firearm — because they concluded there was no reasonable chance of winning a conviction, Crown prosecutors have nonetheless bullied ahead with unsafe storage charges against Mr. Thomson.

One can only speculate on the Crown’s motives, but many prosecutors are so opposed to private citizens owning guns and, especially, using guns to defend themselves, their loved ones or property, that it is easy to believe prosecutors are running Mr. Thomson through the ringer in an attempt to discourage other homeowners from following his lead. They have conceded they cannot get a conviction against the retired crane operator and former firearms instructor for shooting at the three men who were trying to burn down his house with him in it, but perhaps they are hopeful their decision to drag Mr. Thomson through months of emotionally draining and expensive court proceedings will cause other homeowners to conclude armed self-defence isn’t worth the hassle.

Update: An already strange case appears to be getting stranger, as the judge needed to adjourn the court to allow time for the lawyers to figure out just what the law actually says:

Canada’s laws on the storage and handling of guns and ammunition are so complicated that a veteran judge needed to adjourn court to allow two experienced lawyers more time for legal arguments and a search of case law to help parse and dissect them.

It was a dud of an ending after two days of trial in the case of Ian Thomson, a 54-year-old Port Colborne man who fired three shots from a legally owned gun to scare off three masked men who were firebombing his secluded farmhouse while one threatened: “Are you ready to die?”

And the crown displays a remarkable lack of firearms knowledge:

Mr. Mahler said Mr. Thomson was “less than forthcoming” and “secretive” when police arrived. He suggested Mr. Thomson even picked up the spent shell casings from his porch and hid them in his bedside table.

Seeming confused, Mr. Thomson said he didn’t understand.

“Didn’t they fall to the ground?” Mr. Mahler asked, apparently thinking shell casings from a .38-calibre revolver were ejected from the gun with each shot.

“No,” said Mr. Thomson as the crowd of gun advocates watching from the public gallery chuckled and guffawed at Mr. Mahler’s mistake.

Spent shells from a .38 remain in the gun’s cylinder until it is opened and they are removed. Mr. Thomson took the casings out at the same time he opened the gun to reload it, which was at the bedside table, where the casings were when police arrived, he said.

Of course, if he’d had enough time to collect expended brass — in the dark — before police arrived, it doesn’t support the idea that the police were going to be timely in arriving after he first called 911, does it?

January 31, 2012

Homeland Security Theatre: The case of the “Destroy America” Brit twits

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

Jim Harper sifts through the evidence in the “Destroy America” Twitter case:

The Department of Homeland Security has been vague as yet about what actually happened. It may have been some kind of “social media analysis” like this that turned up “suspicious” Tweets leading to the exclusion, though the betting is running toward a suspicious-activity tipline. (What “turned up” the Tweets doesn’t affect my analysis here.) The boastful young Britons Tweeted about going to “destroy America” on the trip — destroy alcoholic beverages in America was almost certainly the import of that line — and dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe.

Profoundly stilted literalism took this to be threatening language. And a failure of even brief investigation prevented DHS officials from discovering the absurdity of that literalism. It would be impossible to “dig up” Marilyn Monroe’s body, which is in a crypt at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

[. . .]

Other facts could combine with Twitter commentary to create a suspicious circumstance on extremely rare occasions, but for proper suspicion to arise, the Tweet or Tweets and all other facts must be consistent with criminal planning and inconsistent with lawful behavior. No information so far available suggests that the DHS did anything other than take Tweets literally in the face of plausible explanations by their authors that they were using hyperbole and irony. This is simple investigative incompetence.

If indeed it is a “social media analysis” program that produced this incident, the U.S. government is paying money to cause U.S. government officials to waste their time on making the United States an unattractive place to visit. That’s a cost-trifecta in the face of essentially zero prospect for any security benefit.

Gary Johnson calls for the immediate repeal of the Patriot Act

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

Posted at the Gary Johnson campaign website:

Speaking Sunday night to a national ACLU conference, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson called for repealing the Patriot Act in its entirety. The two-term governor and presidential candidate’s remarks were delivered in Orlando, FL, at the ACLU’s annual National Staff Conference.

Johnson said, “Ten years ago, we learned that the fastest way to pass a bad law is to call it the ‘Patriot Act’ and force Congress to vote on it in the immediate wake of a horrible attack on the United States. The irony is that there is really very little about the Patriot Act that is patriotic. Instead, it has turned out to be yet another tool the government is using to erode privacy, individual freedom and the Constitution itself.

“Benjamin Franklin had it right. ‘Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety’.

“Absolutely, protecting the American people from those who would do us harm is the federal government’s most basic duty. Everyone gets that. But when harm is done, as on 9-11, it is the nature of government to ask for more power and more authority in order to protect us. That’s how we get laws like the Patriot Act.

January 30, 2012

Irish bishop accused of hate speech

Filed under: Europe, Law, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:25

Blogger “Archbishop Cranmer” is calling for an “I’m Spartacus” response to this pending prosecution of Bishop Philip Boyce:

The Most Reverend Dr Philip Boyce is the Catholic Lord Bishop of Raphoe. He preached a homily on 20th August 2011, entitled ‘To Trust in God’. His Grace reproduces it in its entirety, for the two sentences highlighted in bold have landed the Bishop in a bit of hot water.

Apparently, they constitute an incitement to hatred, at least according to ‘leading humanist’ John Colgan. And so the Gardai have thoroughly investigated the complaint and compiled a file which they have handed to the Republic’s Director of Public Prosecutions.

So what horrible things did the Bishop utter in his “incitement to hatred” that has John Colgan so upset?

The moment of history we live through in Ireland at present is certainly a testing one for the Church and for all of us. Attacked from the outside by the arrows of a secular and godless culture: rocked from the inside by the sins and crimes of priests and consecrated people, we all feel the temptation to lose confidence. Yet, our trust is displayed and deepened above all when we are in troubled and stormy waters. It is easier to be confident when we ride on the crest of a wave, when the tide is coming in. Not so easy, however, yet every bit as necessary, when what is proclaimed by the Church namely the truth of faith with its daily practice and influence on behaviour, is under severe pressure.

[. . .]

Indeed unless we trust in a higher power, in God himself, what hope can we have? St. Paul told his converts at Ephesus that before they came to know Christ, they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). We need the radiance of a hope that looks beyond the horizons of space and time, one as Pope Benedict teaches “that cannot be destroyed even by small-scale failures or by a breakdown in matters of historic importance” (Spe Salvi No. 35). For the distinguishing mark of Christian believers is “the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness…. To come to know God — the true God — means to receive hope” (Ibid, No. 2.3). We thank God for the faith, that enables us to trust in Him.

Perhaps I’m just particularly dense but the bold sentences above are apparently the “hate speech” nuggets in question. I don’t see it myself…

John Colgan said of these two sentences: “I believe statements of this kind are an incitement to hatred of dissidents, outsiders, secularists, within the meaning of the (Incitement to Hatred) Act, who are perfectly good citizens within the meaning of the civil law. The statements exemplify the chronic antipathy towards secularists, humanists etc, which has manifested itself in the ostracising of otherwise perfectly good Irish citizens, who do not share the aims of the Vatican’s Irish Mission Church.”

January 29, 2012

EFF says “Keep Twitter Honest”

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:47

The Electronic Frontier Foundation explains the facts about Twitter’s recent announcement that it will be able to remove Tweets on a country-by-country basis:

Yesterday, Twitter announced in a blog post that it was launching a system that would allow the company to take down content on a country-by-country basis, as opposed to taking it down across the Twitter system. The Internet immediately exploded with allegations of censorship, conspiracy theories about Twitter’s Saudi investors and automated content filtering, and calls for a January 28 protest. One thing is clear: there is widespread confusion over Twitter’s new policy and what its implications are for freedom of expression all over the world.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Twitter already takes down some tweets and has done so for years. All of the other commercial platforms that we’re aware of remove content, at a minimum, in response to valid court orders. Twitter removes some tweets because they are deemed to be abuse or spam, while others are removed in compliance with court orders or DMCA notifications. Until now, when Twitter has taken down content, it has had to do so globally. So for example, if Twitter had received a court order to take down a tweet that is defamatory to Ataturk — which is illegal under Turkish law — the only way it could comply would be to take it down for everybody. Now Twitter has the capability to take down the tweet for people with IP addresses that indicate that they are in Turkey and leave it up everywhere else. Right now, we can expect Twitter to comply with court orders from countries where they have offices and employees, a list that includes the United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, and soon Germany.

Twitter’s increasing need to remove content comes as a byproduct of its growth into new countries, with different laws that they must follow or risk that their local employees will be arrested or held in contempt, or similar sanctions. By opening offices and moving employees into other countries, Twitter increases the risks to its commitment to freedom of expression. Like all companies (and all people) Twitter is bound by the laws of the countries in which it operates, which results both in more laws to comply with and also laws that inevitably contradict one another.

January 27, 2012

Popehat‘s Censorious Asshat round-up

Filed under: Cancon, India, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

If you’re not already following the adventures of Ken at Popehat, you’re really missing some entertainment. Here are a couple of items from this week’s round-up of the folks who want to shut you up when you say things they don’t like using the legal system as a large club:

First up, we have Dr. Randeep Dhillon! Dr. Dhillon is suing Jay Leno. Is he suing Jay Leno for being a trite, phone-it-in placeholder? NO! There’s no California cause of action for that! SAG would never allow it! No, Randeep Dhillon is suing Jay Leno for a lame joke about Mitt Romney suggesting that his vacation home was the Golden Temple of Amritsar, a holy site for Sikhs! [. . .]

Congrats, Dr. Dhillon! You win a date with California’s robust anti-SLAPP statute! You’re going to pay Jay Leno’s attorney fees in this case, which I will estimate to be $50,000! And because some people will generalize about Sikhs based on the act of one asshole — you — you’ve just done more to expose Sikhs to hatred, contempt, ridicule, and obloquy than that threadbare hack Leno ever could! Way to go!

And from closer to home (and, I note, the very first time I’ve needed to use the New Brunswick tag):

Next, ladies and gentlemen, we travel North, to Canada, and the Fredericton, New Brunswick Police Department! The Fredericton Police just staged a eight-officer raid of the apartment of Charles LeBlanc! Is Charles LeBlanc breaking bad with a meth lab? Does he have children in cages? Is he a gun-runner? No! He’s a blogger, and he’s being raided for criminal libel for criticizing the Fredericton Police! That’s right! The Fredericton Police Department not only thinks it is appropriate to serve search warrants on bloggers who say mean things to them, they think that they should execute the search warrants themselves, even though they are the alleged victims of the criminal libel! That’s the New Professionalism in action, ladies and gents! Stand and be amazed!

Update, 4 May, 2012: The charges against Charles LeBlanc have been dropped after the New Brunswick Attorney General determined that Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador have all found Section 301 to be unconstitutional and that no New Brunswick court would be likely to disagree with those decisions. More information at the CBC website.

January 25, 2012

A unanimous Supreme Court decision against GPS tracking that still leaves wiggle room for the police

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:08

Jacob Sullum on the very narrow grounds used by the majority to decide US v. Jones:

“If you win this case,” Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben during oral argument in U.S. v. Jones last fall, “there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States.” That prospect, Breyer said, “sounds like 1984.”

Fortunately, the government did not win the case. But the Court’s unanimous decision, announced on Monday, may not delay Breyer’s 1984 scenario for long. Unless the Court moves more boldly to restrain government use of new surveillance technologies, the Framers’ notion of a private sphere protected from “unreasonable searches and seizures” will become increasingly quaint.

[. . .]

The majority therefore concluded that it was unnecessary to resolve the question of whether Jones had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” regarding his travels on public roads. By contrast, the four other justices, in an opinion by Samuel Alito, said he did, given that investigators tracked all his movements for a month — a kind of surveillance that can reveal a great deal of information about sensitive subjects such as medical appointments, psychiatric treatment, and political, religious, or sexual activities.

While Scalia’s approach draws a clear line that cops may not cross without a warrant, it does not address surveillance technologies that involve no physical intrusion, such as camera networks, satellites, drone aircraft, and GPS features in cars and smart phones. If police had tracked Jones by activating an anti-theft beacon or following his cell phone signal, they could have obtained the same evidence without touching his property.

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