hepcat said:
...the 4th Amendment does NOT give you a "reasonable expectation of privacy" from either government OR individuals outside your own home's walls. And only then, if you draw your blinds.
ahh, a wonderful debate to be had regarding privacy rights in the internet age, love it! the 4th guarantees the right to be secure in my "person, house, papers, and effects"... and you're right- from the government. if an individual violates my person, house, papers, or effects, it's usually regarded as a crime, not a rights violation.
i have to challenge the statement that i have no right to an expectation of privacy from the government outside the physical walls of my own house.
when this right was bestowed, all of these things- your person, your house, your papers, and your effects,- were PHYSICAL things, and, taken together, were EVERYTHING that an individual person had and was. this is very important to understand, because it bestowed control of our lives (meaning access to it by the government) squarely on each individual- the essential aspect of freedom.
the framers could not have imagined a time when all of these things would become 'virtual' or digitalized, but it makes no sense to assert that just because the world has become digital, everything that we are and everything that we have as individual persons is no longer protected by the constitution. we, and all that we are, have not become public property by virtue of the virtual, and whenever that claim is made, it rings false. it implies that the only thing these protections apply to anymore are the trinkets and love letters and such we keep in the nightstand, when the intent was to establish the personal realm, where our business was our own.
while it is true that, in our age, this right has been discounted, dessicated, disregarded, and discarded for the most part, i feel strongly that this is an outright gutting of the original intent, to all of our peril. a line from an old song applies here: "you don't know what you got till it's gone".
as an aside, if the 4th only exists inside the walls of a house, where does that leave the nomads this forum serves?
(please don't take this post as me being snarky or challenging you or your knowledge... i just happen to love a good constitutional debate, and you presented one. obviously, we can agree to disagree!)