Government Invading Privacy
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The cellphone is rapidly becoming the most universal accessory among human beings anywhere in the world. The expansion of its use and capability has made the cellphone not just a communications device but the planner, personal computer, mapping mechanism and record storage device for most people.
It’s true that the government has all access to people’s privacy,but sometimes,Privacy helps us establish boundaries to limit who has access to our bodies, places, and things.
I dont think ts right that the goverment can invade our privacy and we cant do anything about it. Yes they do alot for us but this is to far.
cellphones are becoming a bigg usage to our world and the more advance the more it would sell out
It has another function that most people do not fully appreciate: tracking device. The use of the cellphone as a surveillance tool is at the heart of a major privacy case heard by the Supreme Court this week in Carpenter v. United States. At issue may be the very future of privacy in America. This argument is occurring almost 50 years to the day that the court issued its historic decision in Katz v. United States, which established the current test for privacy. The question is whether the court will celebrate that anniversary with a new ruling effectively gutting privacy for future generations.
although there is many reports of privacy and people not having it. I agree that the government should let you have privacy and let you be you. But in some cases privacy can be bad.
yes sometimes having privacy is bad but then not having privacy is also bad
Lot of things of ours are priavtely
I agree cause the goverment actully needs to give us priavcy cause our information is there for a reason
I think the goverment should let people be and to have space.
I feel like the govermnet tries to get people information and i dont know what they will do we need our own space
The government should let people have privacy but I also think that sometimes giving people privacy is a bad idea.
lthough there is many reports of privacy and people not having it. I agree that the government should let you have privacy and let you be you
privacy is very inportant to people the goverment needs to stop invading on people without a reason.
yeah i agree with her cause they need to stop they are the goverment not people who steal information
i think everyone should have privacy cause it not really fare to have someone have full acsess to you personal life,it makes most people not feel safe with this type of stuff it not okay,the government needs to give people there privacy.the government wants us to trust them but they give us so many reasons not to.
I agree we should all be able to have our own privacy with out having the government have full access to our personal life. There are many people including me that will not be safe having the government go through our stuff.
I think that the government should let us people be and give us our space.
I don’t agree with this because everybody needs their own peace.
I find it very interesting and scary that this has been going on since 50 years ago
i think the government should be able to search your phone but only when necessary
I disagree cause why will the government have to go through your phone and invaid your personal space.
the government can easily access this information however sometimes they don’t need the information they just get it for fun .
although there is many reports of privacy and people not having it. I agree that the government should let you have privacy and let you be you. But in some cases privacy can be bad.
I think its wrong fro the government to invad our privacy through our cellphones. We should have the right to keep things in our phone without having to worry about people seeing it or getting leaked. Also having to worry about people stelling your infromation to sell it to someone.
I feel like everyone needs their privacy and I also think that they should stop getting in people’s privacy
Cause priavcy is a word for a reason we needd that priavcy the goverment wouldnt like if we would want to see their privacy information
i think that no matter what anyone says the government is going to go through what ever they want whenever they want, obviously that is not right because of so many reasons but i dont think it really matters on what we think, they dont care and thats the TRUTH. And also people dont realize that the government has all your information even if they go through whats in your phone or email etc. we literally give it to them willing and thats with the big things like our social security numbers our birth certificates and everything, i dont think they care on who your texting they have your whole identity, where you live, everything about you. All they really care about is if your trying to hurt the president or if you know classified information and things like that. the point is they dont care what you think, and we technically dont have any privacy.
privacy comes both ways, They can cause anxiety, depression, fear, and humiliation and privacy can be good because it can protect us? lets just say our parents go through our phone to see if were doing anything bad so they can protect us so again it goes both ways privacy can be a bad thing or a good thing
we need privacy with our phone and with other electrocics. the government gives us no privacy when it comes to anything witch is not okay.
The reason I don’t agree is because everyone does deserve their own privacy, but there could be times when you need to like if you are looking for a bad guy that needs to go to jail or prison.
we need to be carful with our socials passwords and any thing that is imporatn cause u never know if someone else knows your own personal privacy information
i think sometimes you should have privacy but although it can cause bad things
I think that the goverment should let people have their personal space and info because then it would make them feel unsafe since something an happen to their info like spread to the internet
I say that we should all have privacy. Having privacy is a good thing but it could also be a bad thing. If there is a criminal or hacker, then go ahead an invade their privacy, but other than that we should all have our own privacy.
I agree that having privacy can be bad but sometimes we all need our own privacy.
a cellphone can Invalid your privacy. because you have a cellphone everywhere they can track you or listen to you. also what you reach and buy.
The great burden of civil liberties is that we often must fight for our most cherished principles in defense of the least redeeming persons. As is often the case, this controversy starts with a thoroughly unsympathetic character: Timothy Ivory Carpenter, who was the ringleader of a gang accused of a series of robberies including, ironically, the robbery of cellphone stores in and around Detroit. The gang valued smartphones and so did the police. The police asked cellphone carriers to track Carpenter’s phone for 127 days. The companies supplied 12,898 tracking locations from Carpenter’s movements, including locations near the robberies. He was arrested and eventually given 116 years.
Privacy and technology has always been locked in an existential struggle. The Supreme Court has repeatedly (and rather dim wittedly) adopted privacy protections that were tied to fixed technological capability. Technology quickly made a mockery of such protections. For example, the court adopted the “trespass doctrine” in 1928 as the core protection of privacy of the Fourth Amendment, requiring a warrant for any surveillance involving trespass on a target’s person or property. Advances soon made the ill-conceived doctrine irrelevant as the government adopted forms of surveillance like laser-window pickups, parabolic microphones, and other devices that could place citizens under surveillance without touching their homes or property.
The Supreme Court responded in December 1967 with what many consider to be one of its greatest and most eloquent decisions in Katz. That case rejected the trespass doctrine and declared that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.” The decision reversed a long erosion of privacy protection and required greater use of warrants by the government. Under the Katz test, warrants are needed when there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy” by a citizen. However, that test planted the seed for its own demise. The danger is that, as forms of surveillance increase, particularly with private surveillance in workplaces, businesses and homes, our expectations fall. As expectations falls, warrantless surveillance increases further in a vicious cycle that continues to lower privacy protections.
The fact is that my students live in a surveillance-saturated environment and have a fraction of the privacy protections that my generation enjoyed. The Carpenter case shows how flimsy our laws have become in protecting privacy, a trend that has been accelerated by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress who see little advantage in defending privacy over new police powers. Thus, in this case, the police simply avoided asking a judge for a warrant with a showing of probable cause. Notably, probable cause itself is relatively easy to establish and warrants are rarely denied. In this case, it would have been quickly granted. Instead, the police demanded the information under the Stored Communications Act, which requires only a showing that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that the records sought “are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.”
Notably, the government is relying on the 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, which is itself based on a technological relic. In that case, the court ruled that there is no expectation of privacy in phone numbers because we all “give” the numbers to a third party (the telephone company) to make calls. It is an anachronistic view that raises the image of a switchboard operator as opposed to computerized systems that merely transmit and connect numbers. Yet, the government is arguing that cellphones are no different in “sharing” a signal with companies like AT&T. This ignores that consumers have little choice. Moreover, even under the myth of the Smith case, there is no active sending of the signal for a cellphone user. It is part of this ubiquitous technology. If you have a cellphone, it emits this signal. The government wants the court to treat the use of a cellphone as a type of waiver of privacy.
In 2012, the Supreme Court resisted the encroachment of technological advances in United States v. Jones, when it ruled that police need a warrant to attach a GPS tracker on a car. Now, however, the government can negate that case by just using the cellphone inside the car to achieve that same result. Indeed, the case could negate a host of rulings in allowing the government to follow you within buildings, despite a 2011 ruling barring the warrantless use of thermal devices for such purposes.
The government hopes that the “third-party” mythology will drive a stake into the heart of privacy protections under Katz and these other cases. The fact that a warrant would have been easy to obtain in this case is both telling and chilling. Historically, governments have resisted any limitations on their power even when those limitations are workable and reasonable. Yet, it is not always easy to get a free people to surrender their privacy. To do so, citizens are fed false tradeoffs between privacy and security despite the fact that courts overwhelmingly approve warrants. Indeed, technology has made it faster and easier to obtain warrants by telephone and email.
Members of both parties have yielded to the demands for greater and greater surveillance power. They know that they are rarely given credit for defending privacy but could be blamed for not being sufficiently tough on crime or terrorism. For them, the choice is easy. For the rest of us, it is far more serious. If successful, most citizens will not only be practically forced to carry around a government surveillance device but will literally pay for the privilege. Make no mistake. To paraphrase the AT&T slogan, the government is on the verge of “rethinking possible” under the Fourth Amendment and could force the rest of us to rethink privacy in America.
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Privacy is something that everybody should have no matter what. And having a phone means that thats the place you have more privacy. The government can’t just take that away from you.
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