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[James Dasher <jdasher AT ibiblio.org>]

On Tuesday, Mar 9, 2004, at 20:58 US/Eastern, Phillip Rhodes wrote:

> James Dasher wrote:
>
>
> > I don't like wiretaps or other infringements on my privacy, either.
>
>
> My personal opinion, and I'm not alone on this, is that the 5th and
> 10th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution do establish the right to
> privacy, even if it's not explicitly spelled out.  Many people
> argue that if the right to privacy was so important, why wasn't
> it put in as a separate Amendment...  my belief is that the Founding
> Fathers believed that right to be so "self-evident" that there was
> no need to spell it out.

We could have an entire thread - heck, an entire *forum* - dedicated to 
this one question.  But, briefly, that interstate commerce clause 
provided the wedge that federal legislators used to throw wide the 
doors to legislative hyperactivity.  Regardless of what the founders 
intended - and I tend toward a stricter constructionism - the massive 
body of legislation and judicial precedent granting all sorts of powers 
to the federal government makes the assertion of a "right to privacy" 
shaky grounds, at best.

For numerous reasons, I think that a reinvigoration of property rights 
would stem the tide of invasive legislation - seat-belt laws, grade 
school zero-tolerance policies, zoning ordinances - that limit the 
individual exercise of liberty.  A sort of "right to property" to 
replace the "right to privacy", if you will.  But that, too, would take 
days to debate, and by then we would only have scratched the surface of 
a handful of the more brilliant and renowned thinkers on property, 
liberty, and law.

> > Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  (To revisit a recent joke....)
>
> Here's a pretty good analysis of some parts of the Patriot Act,
> from Epic:
>
> http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/usapatriot/
>
> and here's another good review of it:
>
> http://www.independent.org/tii/news/030915ONeil.html

I subscribe to the EPIC list, and remember reading some stuff, as well 
as skimming the legislation.  I remember being unimpressed.

I'll take another look, though, and see if I remember why I thought the 
effort sort of frivolous, or if I find myself reflecting that my 
earlier impression was ill-founded.

Thanks for the links.

> There's other stuff too.  Like the ability to arrest and imprison
> someone without telling them what the charges are against them,
> and the ability to hold them (as far as I can tell) more or less
> indefinitely... as long as they're suspected of "terrorism."  (this may
> only apply to immigrants... or maybe it's everybody, I'm not 100%
> clear on that aspect myself).

I thought I remembered something about the Reno Justice Department 
using existing powers to do exactly that, and something about Ashcroft 
subjecting the use of those powers to judicial review, resulting in a 
few of the cases getting thrown out.  But, again, I'll have to revisit 
the material.

> Disclaimer: I haven't sat down and read the entire thing (It's 
> something like 342 pages, IIRC, of legalese and cross references to 
> other documents) so I'm only familiar with bits and pieces of it, and 
> could be wrong about any specific point.

No worries.  Thanks again for the links.

Regards -