Computers, Privacy & the Constitution

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MatthewHurtFirstPaper 4 - 13 Mar 2020 - Main.MatthewHurt
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
 
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Why the hell isn't this working

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Wikimedia and The Empty Promise of the Fourth Amendment Lawsuit

 
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-- By MatthewHurt - 04 Mar 2020
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-- By MatthewHurt - 13 Mar 2020
 

Introduction

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The Fourth Amendment is often categorized, along with the Fifth and Sixth, as being a criminal procedure provision within the bill of rights. However, there is nothing inherently criminal about the text of the Fourth Amendment: it proscribes certain conduct on the part of the government, but it does not limit the proscription to strictly to criminal investigations. If one reads in context of the remaining the bill of rights must be read as a coherent single document the intent of which as “fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline.” (1). A plain reading of the amendment indicates that the individual’s right is violated upon the act of government intrusion, not the government attempting to introduce evidence derived therefrom at a trial. Therefore any agency of the government When read in this light, the Fourth Amendment takes on broader application than the narrow role of criminal procedure to which it has been relegated.

Subsection A

Notes

1 : chapter four note 84. It is worth noting that the 10 aside from being written, debated, and passed simultaneously, the First Congress consciously decided against incorporating the first ten amendments into the preexisting articles of the Constitution, and instead appended them as an additional text.


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The Fourth Amendment is often categorized, along with the Fifth and Sixth, as being a criminal procedure provision within the Bill of Rights. However, there is nothing inherently criminal about the text of the Fourth Amendment: it proscribes certain conduct on the part of the government, but it does not strictly limit that proscription to criminal investigations. A plain reading of the amendment indicates that the individual's right is violated upon the act of government intrusion, not the government introducing derivative evidence at a criminal trial. Moreover, if one reads each amendment in context of the remaining nine, the bill of rights emerges as a coherent single document, created as the "fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline."(2). In this context the Fourth Amendment takes on broader application than the narrow role in criminal procedure to which it has traditionally been relegated: it proscribes any unreasonable searches and seizures by any organ of the government regardless motive or application.

Notes

2 : Bernard Schwartz, The Great Rights of Mankind 117 (Madison 1992) quoting The Papers of Thomas Jefferson 571 (Boyd ed. 1951). It is worth noting that aside from being written, debated, and passed simultaneously, the First Congress consciously decided against incorporating the first ten amendments into the preexisting articles of the Constitution, and instead appended them as an additional text. Schwartz supra at 172.


 
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Lawsuit as a Remedy

The obvious problem with challenging a government searches and seizures as unreasonable lies in the very discovery of the violative act. Commonly, this denouement takes place in the context of a criminal prosecution where government the attempts the introduction of evidence of questionable provenance. For such violations, the exclusionary rule provides an apt remedy. But when the intelligence apparatus conducts a search, it does so intending to remain undetected indefinitely. Where there is no revelation, what are the appropriate remedies? Given the preventative language of the Fourth Amendment itself, and the nature of government bulk collection programs, a private citizen should be able to find effective remedy in a lawsuit against the government. Yet such has proven not to be the case, largely due to the issue of standing.
 
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Standing

To establish standing to bring suit under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff must establish: (1) an injury-in-fact; (2) a casual connection between the injury and the alleged conduct; and (3) the redressability of the injury by a court."(3) The first prong of establishing injury requires a plaintiff show that the government has, in fact, surveilled on their communications in a manner violating the Fourth Amendment. This, burden proves problematic as any evidence of the government surreptitiously monitoring its citizens would naturally be in the possession of the government and only available to the plaintiff if provided through discovery. When served with a discovery request, the government has, unsurprisingly, proven loathe to turn over classified evidence either confirm or refute any alleged surveillance. One of its most effective methods in frustrating those discovery attempts is the state secrets doctrine.

Notes

3 : Wikimedia Found. v. NSA/Central Sec. Serv., 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 218578 citing Clapper v. Amnesty Int'l USA, 568 U.S. 398 (2013).


 
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Subsection B

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State Secrets Doctrine

The state secrets doctrine, originally rooted in federal common law, held that courts cannot require production of evidence (even for in camera review) when "there is a reasonable danger that compulsion of the evidence will expose . . . matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged." (4) While the Reynolds court in dicta admonished that the claim of privilege on the part of the government, should not be lightly accepted,"(5) in practice courts do not appear to be particularly demanding.(6) Thus the Court created a paradox in which an executive agency could potentially surveil American citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment, but deny production evidence of that surveillance by asserting a judicially created privilege. Congress attempted to address this paradox with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provided for _in camera, ex parte review of classified evidence obtained or derived from electronic surveillance. (7) The private lawsuit have been consistently blocked by litigants inability to demonstrate standing (that the government can deny private citizens the evidence of potentially unreasonable searches and seizures under state secrets doctrine. However, the recent Wikimedia ruling denied the applicability of this provision of the FISA prior to the plaintiff making a clear showing that they were the subject of electronic surveillance. (8).

Notes

4 : United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1, 10 (1953). Additionally, state secrets doctrine encompasses a complete bar to any litigation requiring disclosure of classified information. Totten v. United States, 92 U.S. 105 (1876). As this paper deals primarily with implications state secrets doctrine on the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, it will confine its discussion to the Reynolds privilege and set aside the issue of the Totten bar.

5 : Id. at 11.

6 : One analysis found that after September 11, 2001 federal courts denied the government's assertion of state secrets privilege, in their entirety, in only about 10% of cases. _See_NOTE: Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe: An Empirical Analysis of the State Secrets Doctrine, 67 Stan. L. Rev. 1173.

7 : 50 U.S.C. § 1806(f)

8 : Wikimedia supra note 2 at 60.


 
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States Secrets in Application

The logic of this ruling, while consistent with other appellate court rulings, creates a perverse incentive for the government intelligence services to cast their nets as wide as possible so just not so wide they capture all communications:(9) the less discriminately one surveils, the more difficult it becomes for any particular plaintiff to make a _prima facie case that their specific communications were intercepted. It seems lost on the judiciary that these potential plaintiffs knowledge of the very existence of the data collection programs under § 702 of FISA (the Prism and Upstream programs) results from the actions of Edward Snowden.(10) Under this regime whereby any evidence of a Fourth Amendment violation remains classified, there is no lawful mechanism of oversight. Thus the only conceivable way any party could obtain evidence to show standing would for an individually illegally leaking that information. Thus, these rulings also create the perverse incentive for any potential whistleblowers to emulate Mr. Snowden's actions.

Notes

9 : Obama v. Klayman, 809 F.3d 559, 566 (D.C. Cir. 2015) in his concurring opinion Senior Circuit Judge Williams stated that "in the face of the government's representations that it has never collected "all, or even virtually all" call records, I find plaintiffs' claimed inference inadequate to demonstrate a 'substantial likelihood' of injury." Id.

10 : See Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, Report on the Surveillance Program Operated Pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act 7 (2014) available at https://www.pclob.gov/library/702-Report-2.pdf. While the PCLOB was established prior to the Snowden revelations, it is unclear from their report that either of these programs would have been made known to it absent his actions. Id. at 1.


 
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Conclusion: Paradoxes and Self-Licking Ice Cream Cones

The bizarre conclusion from this jurisprudence is that the state secrets doctrine trumps the American citizens' Fourth Amendment rights. The paramount concern throughout this line of cases is the preservation of secrecy.(11) Absent anywhere in this line of cases a question as to whether or not any of this is reasonable. That a judicially created privilege could deny a judge examination of evidence of a potential constitutional violation defies common sense. A system inoculating the surveillance apparatus from judicial oversight, would be primed for abuse. It begs the question, why would any given intelligence service not take everything they could when the very raison d'etra of any intelligence organization is to gather information? Yet, absent a Supreme Court ruling contra the state secrets doctrine appears to have created that exact system.

Notes

11 : See Sterling v. Tenet, 416 F.3d 338, 345 (4th Cir. 2005) holding that "where the dangers asserted by the government are substantial and real, [the judge] need not -indeed, should not- probe further."


 
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Subsub 2

State Secrets Doctrine

Subsection A

Subsection B

 
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Revision 4r4 - 13 Mar 2020 - 20:53:06 - MatthewHurt
Revision 3r3 - 13 Mar 2020 - 17:04:40 - MatthewHurt
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